Though I have now, I hope, satisfactorily accounted for the milk in the coco-nut, and incidentally for some other matters in its economy as well, I am loth to leave the young seedling whom I have brought so far on his way to the tender mercies of the winds and storms and tropical animals, some of whom are extremely fond of his juicy and delicate shoots.  Indeed, the growing point or bud of most palms is a very pleasant succulent vegetable, and one kind—­the West Indian mountain cabbage—­deserves a better and more justly descriptive name, for it is really much more like seakale or asparagus.  I shall try to follow our young seedling on in life, therefore, so as to give, while I am about it, a fairly comprehensive and complete biography of a single flourishing coco-nut palm.

Beginning, then, with the fall of the nut from the parent-tree, the troubles of the future palm confront it at once in the shape of the nut-eating crab.  This evil-disposed crustacean is common around the sea-coast of the eastern tropical islands, which is also the region mainly affected by the coco-nut palm; for coco-nuts are essentially shore-loving trees, and thrive best in the immediate neighbourhood of the sea.  Among the fallen nuts, the clumsy-looking thief of a crab (his appropriate Latin name is Birgus latro) makes great and dreaded havoc.  To assist him in his unlawful object he has developed a pair of front legs, with specially strong and heavy claws, supplemented by a last or tail-end pair armed only with very narrow and slender pincers.  He subsists entirely upon a coco-nut diet.  Setting to work upon a big fallen nut—­with the husk on, coco-nuts measure in the raw state about twelve inches the long way—­he tears off all the coarse fibre bit by bit, and gets down at last to the hard shell.  Then he hammers away with his heavy claw on the softest eye-hole till he has pounded an opening right through it.  This done he twists round his body so as to turn his back upon the coco-nut he is operating upon (crabs are never famous either for good manners or gracefulness) and proceeds awkwardly but effectually to extract all the white kernel or pulp through the breach with his narrow pair of hind pincers.  Like man, too, the robber-crab knows the value of the outer husk as well as of the eatable nut itself, for he collects the fibre in surprising quantities to line his burrow, and lies upon it, the clumsy sybarite, for a luxurious couch.  Alas, however, for the helplessness of crabs, and the rapacity and cunning of all-appropriating man!  The spoil-sport Malay digs up the nest for the sake of the fibre it contains, which spares him the trouble of picking junk on his own account, and then he eats the industrious crab who has laid it all up, while he melts down the great lump of fat under the robber’s capacious tail, and sometimes gets from it as much as a good quart of what may be practically considered as limpid coco-nut oil. Sic vos non vobis is certainly the melancholy refrain of all