(strictly speaking, the leaf-stalks) answer admirably for rafters, posts, or fencing; the fibrous sheath at the base is a remarkable natural imitation of cloth, employed for strainers, wrappers, and native hats; while the trunk, or stem, passes in carpentry under the name of porcupine wood, and produces beautiful effects as a wonderfully coloured cabinet-makers’ material.  These are only a few selected instances out of the innumerable uses of the coco-nut palm.

Apart even from the manifold merits of the tree that bears it, the milk itself has many and great claims to our respect and esteem, as everybody who has ever drunk it in its native surroundings will enthusiastically admit.  In England, to be sure, the white milk in the dry nuts is a very poor stuff, sickly, and strong-flavoured, and rather indigestible.  But in the tropics, coco-nut milk, or, as we oftener call it there, coco-nut water, is a very different and vastly superior sort of beverage.  At eleven o’clock every morning, when you are hot and tired with the day’s work, your black servant, clad from head to foot in his cool clean white linen suit, brings you in a tall soda glass full of a clear, light, crystal liquid, temptingly displayed against the yellow background of a chased Benares brass-work tray.  The lump of ice bobs enticingly up and down in the centre of the tumbler, or clinks musically against the edge of the glass as he carries it along.  You take the cool cup thankfully and swallow it down at one long draught; fresh as a May morning, pure as an English hillside spring, delicate as—­well, as coco-nut water.  None but itself can be its parallel.  It is certainly the most delicious, dainty, transparent, crystal drink ever invented.  How did it get there, and what is it for?

In the early green stage at which coco-nuts are generally picked for household use in the tropics the shell hasn’t yet solidified into a hard stony coat, but still remains quite soft enough to be readily cut through with a sharp table knife—­just like young walnuts picked for pickling.  If you cut one across while it’s in this unsophisticated state, it is easy enough to see the arrangement of the interior, and the part borne by the milk in the development and growth of the mature nut.  The ordinary tropical way of opening coco-nuts for table, indeed, is by cutting off the top of the shell and rind in successive slices, at the end where the three pores are situated, until you reach the level of the water, which fills up the whole interior.  The nutty part around the inside of the shell is then extremely soft and jelly-like, so that it can be readily eaten with a spoon; but as a matter of fact very few people ever do eat the flesh at all.  After their first few months in the tropics, they lose the taste for this comparatively indigestible part, and confine themselves entirely (like patients at a German spa) to drinking the water.  A young coco-nut is thus seen to consist, first of a green outer skin, then