, before they steady
down into that crowning glory of our race, the solid, sober,
matter-of-fact, commercial British Philistine. Hence the coco-nut in its
unstripped state is roughly triangular in form, its angles answering to
the separate three fruits of simpler palms; and it has three pits or
weak places in the shell, through which the embryos of the three
original kernels used to force their way out. But as only one of them is
now needed, that one alone is left soft; the other two, which would be
merely a source of weakness to the plant if unprotected, are covered in
the existing nut by harder shell. Doubtless they serve in part to
deceive the too inquisitive monkey or other enemy, who probably
concludes that if one of the pits is hard and impermeable, the other two
are so likewise.

Though I have now, I hope, satisfactorily accounted for the milk in the
coco-nut, and incidentally for some other matters in its economy as
well, I am loth to leave the young seedling whom I have brought so far
on his way to the tender mercies of the winds and storms and tropical
animals, some of whom are extremely fond of his juicy and delicate
shoots. Indeed, the growing point or bud of most palms is a very
pleasant succulent vegetable, and one kind--the West Indian mountain
cabbage--deserves a better and more justly descriptive name, for it is
really much more like seakale or asparagus. I shall try to follow our
young seedling on in life, therefore, so as to give, while I am about
it, a fairly comprehensive and complete biography of a single
flourishing coco-nut palm.

Beginning, then, with the fall of the nut from the parent-tree, the
troubles of the future palm confront it at once in the shape of the
nut-eating crab. This evil-disposed crustacean is common around the
sea-coast of the eastern tropical islands, which is also the region
mainly affected by the coco-nut palm; for coco-nuts are essentially
shore-loving trees, and thrive best in the immediate neighbourhood of
the sea. Among the fallen nuts, the clumsy-looking thief of a crab (his
appropriate Latin name is _Birgus latro_) makes great and dreaded havoc.
To assist him in his unlawful object he has developed a pair of front
legs, with specially strong and heavy claws, supplemented by a last or
tail-end pair armed only with very narrow and slender pincers. He
subsists entirely upon a coco-nut diet. Setting to work upon a big
fallen nut--with the husk on, coco-nuts measure in