As the nut lies upon the sand, in shade, and rain, and heat, that baby’s finger begins boring its way, with unerring aim, out of the weakest eye.  Soft itself, yet with immense wedging power, from the gradual accretion of tiny cells, it pierces the wood, and then rends right and left the tough fibrous coat.  Just so may be seen—­I have seen—­a large flagstone lifted in a night by a crop of tiny soft toadstools which have suddenly blossomed up beneath it.  The baby’s finger protrudes at last, and curves upward toward the light, to commence the campaign of life:  but it has meanwhile established, like a good strategist, a safe base of operations in its rear, from which it intends to draw supplies.  Into the albuminous cream which lines the shell, and into the cavity where the milk once was, it throws out white fibrous vessels, which eat up the albumen for it, and at last line the whole inside of the shell with a white pith.  The albumen gives it food wherewith to grow, upward and downward.  Upward, the white plumule hardens into what will be a stem; the one white cotyledon which sheaths it develops into a flat, ribbed, forked, green leaf, sheathing it still; and above it fresh leaves, sheathing always at their bases, begin to form a tiny crown; and assume each, more and more, the pinnate form of the usual coco-leaf.  But long ere this, from the butt of the white plumule, just outside the nut, white threads of root have struck down into the sand; and so the nut lies, chained to the ground by a bridge-like chord, which drains its albumen, through the monkey’s eye, into the young plant.  After a while—­a few months, I believe—­the draining of the nut is complete; the chord dries up—­I know not how, for I had neither microscope nor time wherewith to examine—­and parts; and the little plant, having got all it can out of its poor wet-nurse, casts her ungratefully off to wither on the sand; while it grows up into a stately tree, which will begin to bear fruit in six or seven years, and thenceforth continue, flowering and fruiting the whole year round without a pause, for sixty years and more.

I think I have described this—­to me—­’miraculum’ simply enough to be understood by the non-scientific reader, if only he or she have first learned the undoubted fact—­known, I find, to very few ‘educated’ English people—­that the coco-palm which produces coir-rope, and coconuts, and a hundred other useful things, is not the same plant as the cacao-bush which produces chocolate, nor anything like it.  I am sorry to have to insist upon this fact:  but till Professor Huxley’s dream—­and mine—­is fulfilled, and our schools deign to teach, in the intervals of Latin and Greek, some slight knowledge of this planet, and of those of its productions which are most commonly in use, even this fact may need to be re-stated more than once.

We re-embarked again, and rowed down to the river-mouth to pick up shells, and drink in the rich roaring trade breeze, after the choking atmosphere of the lagoon; and then rowed up home, tired, and infinitely amused, though neither Manati nor Boa-constrictor had been seen; and then we fell to siesta; during which—­with Mr. Tennyson’s forgiveness—­I read myself to sleep with one of his best poems; and then went to dinner, not without a little anxiety.