Two or three blows with the cutlass, at the small end of the nut, cut off not only the pith-coat, but the point of the shell; and disclose—­the nut being held carefully upright meanwhile—­a cavity full of perfectly clear water, slightly sweet, and so cold (the pith-coat being a good non-conductor of heat) that you are advised, for fear of cholera, to flavour it with a little brandy.  After draining this natural cup, you are presented with a natural spoon of rind, green outside and white within, and told to scoop out and eat the cream which lines the inside of the shell, a very delicious food in the opinion of Creoles.  After which, if you are as curious as some of us were, you will sit down under the amber shade, and examine at leisure the construction and germination of these famous and royal nuts.  Let me explain it, even at the risk of prolixity.  The coat of white pith outside, with its green skin, will gradually develop and harden into that brown fibre of which matting is made.  The clear water inside will gradually harden into that sweetmeat which little boys eat off stalls and barrows in the street; the first delicate deposit of which is the cream in the green nut.  This is albumen, intended to nourish the young palm till it has grown leaves enough to feed on the air, and roots enough to feed on the soil; and the birth of that young palm is in itself a mystery and a miracle, well worth considering.  Much has been written on it, of which I, unfortunately, have read very little; but I can at least tell what I have seen with my own eyes.

If you search among the cream-layer at the larger end of the nut, you will find, gradually separating itself from the mass, a little white lump, like the stalk of a very young mushroom.  That is the ovule.  In that lies the life, the ‘forma formativa,’ of the future tree.  How that life works, according to its kind, who can tell?  What it does, is this:  it is locked up inside a hard woody shell, and outside that shell are several inches of tough tangled fibre.  How can it get out, as soft and seemingly helpless as a baby’s finger?

All know that there are three eyes in the monkey’s face, as the children call it, at the butt of the nut.  Two of these eyes are blind, and filled up with hard wood.  They are rudiments—­hints—­ that the nut ought to have, perhaps had uncounted ages since, not one ovule, but three, the type-number in palms.  One ovule alone is left; and that is opposite the one eye which is less blind than the rest; the eye which a schoolboy feels for with his knife, when he wants to get out the milk.