In order to understand it one ought to examine a coco-nut in the act of
budding, and to do this it is by no means necessary to visit the West
Indies or the Pacific Islands; all you need to do is to ask a Covent
Garden fruit salesman to get you a few 'growers.' On the voyage to
England, a certain number of precocious coco-nuts, stimulated by the
congenial warmth and damp of most shipholds, usually begin to sprout
before their time; and these waste nuts are sold by the dealers at a low
rate to East-end children and inquiring botanists. An examination of a
'grower' very soon convinces one what is the use of the milk in the
coco-nut.
It must be duly borne in mind, to begin with, that the prime end and
object of the nut is not to be eaten raw by the ingenious monkey, or to
be converted by lordly man into coco-nut biscuits, or coco-nut pudding,
but simply and solely to reproduce the coco-nut palm in sufficient
numbers to future generations. For this purpose the nut has slowly
acquired by natural selection a number of protective defences against
its numerous enemies, which serve to guard it admirably in the native
state from almost all possible animal depredators. First of all, the
actual nut or seed itself consists of a tiny embryo plant, placed just
inside the softest of the three pores or pits at the end of the shell,
and surrounded by a vast quantity of nutritious pulp, destined to feed
and support it during its earliest unprotected days, if not otherwise
diverted by man or monkey.
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