le country. 'The State has hence facetiously been called
Coconutcore,' says its historian; which charmingly illustrates the true
Anglo-Indian notion of what constitutes facetiousness, and ought to
strike the last nail into the coffin of a competitive examination
system. A good tree in full bearing should produce 120 coco-nuts in a
season; so that a very small grove is quite sufficient to maintain a
respectable family in decency and comfort. Ah, what a mistake the
English climate made when it left off its primitive warmth of the
tertiary period, and got chilled by the ice and snow of the Glacial
Epoch down to its present misty and dreary wheat-growing condition! If
it were not for that, those odious habits of steady industry and
perseverance might never have been developed in ourselves at all, and we
might be lazily picking copra off our own coco-palms, to this day, to
export in return for the piece-goods of some Arctic Manchester situated
somewhere about the north of Spitzbergen or the New Siberian Islands.

Even as things stand at the present day, however, it is wonderful how
much use we modern Englishmen now make in our own houses of this far
Eastern nut, whose very name still bears upon its face the impress of
its originally savage origin. From morning to night we never leave off
being indebted to it. We wash with it as old brown Windsor or glycerine
soap the moment we leave our beds. We walk across our passages on the
mats made from its fibre. We sweep our rooms with its brushes, and wipe
our feet on it as we enter our doors. As rope, it ties up our trunks and
packages; in the hands of the housemaid it scrubs our floors; or else,
woven into coarse cloth, it acts as a covering for bales and furniture
sent by rail or steamboat. The confectioner undermines our digestion in
early life with coco-nut candy; the cook tempts us later on with
coco-nut cake; and Messrs. Huntley and Palmer cordially invite us to
complete the ruin with coco-nut biscuits. We anoint our chapped hands
with one of its preparations after washing; and grease the wheels of our
carriages with another to make them run smoothly. Finally, we use the
oil to burn in our reading lamps, and light ourselves at last to bed
with stearine candles. Altogether, an amateur census of a single small
English cottage results in the startling discovery that it contains
twenty-seven distinct articles which owe their origin in one way or
another to the coco-nut palm. And ye