Cocoanut shell

“ When they eat, a cocoanut-shell full of it always stands near them, into which they dip every morsel, especially of fish, and often leave the whole soaking in it, drinking at intervals large sups of it out of their hands, so that a man may use half a pint of it at a meal. ”

“ Into the inner shell which it has vacated, it throws little fibrous threads which slowly absorb the albumen, and thus sustain its new life as it rapidly develops. First a few leaves grow upward, which from the very outset begin to assume the pinnate [Pg 208] form of the cocoanut leaf, while, stretching earthward, a myriad of little threads of roots bury themselves in the ground. Though the tree will grow to a height of sixty feet or more, these roots will never individually exceed the size of the fingers on one's hand. ”

“ The stem is so strong and tough, being composed of closely-interwoven fibres, 96that the entire top may be torn off by the hurricanes and the trunk remain uninjured. The cocoanut commences to bear when from three to ten years old and will continue to produce fruit, year after year, for from seventy-five to one hundred years. The nut is used for both food and drink, and the shell is made into dippers, jars, spoons and other household utensils. The dried cocoa is a valuable article of commerce, but the real value of the oil prepared from the fresh meat is only beginning to be realized. ”

“ These tough customers have a body seven or eight inches across, and great long strong legs extending a foot on either side. Their shell was of the hardest and their grasping claws of the strongest. They spend most of their time in the cocoanut plantations, feeding upon the fallen nuts. Just how they get at the tender meat inside the cocoanut shell is more or less a question. The natives tell you that the great crab climbs a cocoanut tree, snips off a cocoanut, thus letting it fall heavily three or four score of feet to the ground. ”

“ In the tropics, where forestine animals are most developed, the nuts often reach a very high stage of evolution. The cocoanut is a familiar example: it has a soft outer husk, stringy and loose, which breaks and deadens its fall from the tall and graceful palm-trees on which it grows; and inside this yielding, protective mat-work, it has a very solid shell, inclosing the large and richly-stored kernel. But the cashew-nut is, perhaps, the most remarkable in some respects of any known example. It has taken most extraordinary pains to preserve its kernel from injury ”

“ It has been said that nature seldom produces a tree so variously useful to man as the cocoanut palm. In tropical countries, where it grows abundantly, its leaves are employed for thatching, its fibers for manufacturing many useful articles, while its ashes produce potash in abundance. The fruit is eaten raw, and in many ways is prepared for food; it also yields an oil which forms an important article of commerce. The milk of the fruit is a cooling beverage, and the woody shell of the nut answers very well for a cup from which to drink it. ”

“ Cocoanut shells are often used, and have numerous, both long and short, stone cells and spiral vessels from this fibrous tissue; the long stone cells having thinner walls than the shorter cells, all of which are readily seen after bleaching. When the shells are roasted, they refuse to bleach, and it is then only possible to class the particles, on which the reagents do not act, as roasted shells or charcoal, which are frequently used in pepper to give desired color to material rendered too light by white adulterants. ”

“ They grow on all of the tropical islands of the Pacific Ocean, in the West Indies, and along the shores of most warm countries, but never far from the sea.
[140] When the cocoanut falls into the water, it is rocked and tossed by the waves and drifted about by the currents, but it is safe within its shell, for the salt water cannot penetrate this. When it finally comes to rest upon some strange shore, it is ready to give to the world another cocoanut palm, if the climate is like that from which it sailed. In this way nature has helped the trees to become widely distributed. ”

“ The natives have a saying that the cocoanut palm loves the sound of the human voice, and, [514] like the magpie and robin, will not flourish away from the habitations of men. Like the palmyra palm in the north of Ceylon, the cocoanut in the south yields most of the necessaries of life. Its fruit furnishes food, its shell drinking vessels, its juice palm wine and sugar, its stem materials for building, its leaves roofs, matting, baskets and paper. ”

“ The cocoa-nut tree requires a sandy and well-drained soil; and although it flourishes where no other tree will grow, it welcomes a soil of a richer quality and produces fruit in proportion. Eighty nuts per annum are about the average income from a healthy tree in full bearing, but this, of course, depends much upon the locality. This palm delights in the sea-breeze, and never attains the same perfection inland that it does in the vicinity of the coast. There are several varieties, and that which is considered superior is the yellow species, called the "king cocoanut." ”

“ That the cocoanut will grow and thrive upon the immediate seashore, in common with other plants, is simply an indication of its adaptability to environment. That it is at a positive disadvantage as a shore plant may be determined conclusively by anyone who will examine the root system of a seashore-grown tree upturned by a wash or tidal wave, and one uprooted from any cause, farther inland. ”

“ Flowers and fruit in all stages of ripening grace the crown at all times of the year. The young cocoanut contains the delicious, cooling milk, and the soft pulp, a nourishing article of food. The mature nut is an excellent substitute for meat, as the kernel contains more than seventy per cent, of a fixed, bland, nutritious oil. The tree bears fruit in from seven to eight years from the time of planting, and its lifetime is from seventy to eighty years. Its greatest ambition during youth is to reach the clouds and equal its oldest neighbors in height. ”

“ But, as whatever feeds a young plant will also feed an animal, and as many animals betray a felonious desire to appropriate to their own wicked ends the food-stuffs laid up by the palm for the use of its own seedling, the cocoa-nut has been compelled to inclose this particularly large and rich kernel in a very solid and defensive shell. ”

“ All modern cocoanut-oil mills are supplied with a decorticator armed with revolving discs that tear or cut through the husk longitudinally, freeing the nut from its outer covering and leaving the latter in the best possible condition for the subsequent extraction of its fiber. This decorticator is fed from a hopper and is made of a size and capacity to husk from 500 to 1,000 nuts per hour.
Rasping and grinding machinery of many patterns and makes, for reducing the meat to a pulp, is used in India, Ceylon, and China ”

“ The plantain, the mangrove, the dark, glossy, broad leaf of the breadfruit are almost the only varieties of foliage we have in contrast with the ever-present cocoanut, which casts its shadow on the ground with a central stem of light, instead of shade, running through the immense frond. The population of Ceylon is twelve times as dense in the western as in the eastern provinces, and all the inhabitants of the coast are supported by the cocoanut. ”

“ The progressive German colonist of Kamerun, German East Africa, and the South Pacific Islands, as well as the French in Congo and Madagascar, are vigorously practicing conventional, modern orchard methods in the treatment of their cocoanut groves, and it is amazing to read of discussions between Ceylon and Indian nut growers as to the best method of tethering cattle upon cocoanut palms in pasture, so as to obtain the most benefit from their excreta. ”

“ A great messenger of life, and one of the most transportable, is the solid cocoanut. Not only does it travel well, but, when thrown upon shoal or rock, if it find only a little poor white sand, which would support nothing else, the cocoanut contents itself there, finds brackish water not a jot less agreeable than the freshest; germinates, thrives, grows into a robust cocoa tree. ”

“ When older, this matting has every appearance of coarse cotton cloth, and is used to wrap food, or is made into bags and even rough garments, specially for fishermen.
The white flowers are small and grow along a branching stalk, protected by a sheath, and just above the commencement of the leaf. From them is made the cocoanut-brandy that enables the native to forget his sorrows. Flowers and nuts in every stage of development are on the same tree, a year elapsing between the first blossom and the ripe nut. ”

“ They were made happy by finding all things needful for their comfort in a large plant case. A thick layer of cocoa fibre was spread over the bottom of the case, dry moss and hay provided, wheat-ears, oats, and canary seed, and a small cup of water. A flowerpot in which a number of small branches were fixed afforded opportunity for exercise in climbing, and a pleasant resting-place was formed by a half-cocoanut filled with cotton wool and roofed over with dry moss, then slung by three wires in a tripod of sticks of corky-barked elm, a little hole for entrance being left at one side. ”

“ 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 of a fibrous coat, which afterwards becomes the hair, and next of a harder shell which finally gets quite woody ”

“ The structure of the cocoanut seems well fitted to endure winds of almost any force, and that a remarkably abundant and strong circulation [18] of air is essential to its best development is well shown by comparing a tree subjected to it with the wretched, spindling specimen growing in a sheltered glen or ravine. ”

“ In the early green stage at which cocoa-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 coco-nut palm is everything to the Cinghalese: they use the kernel of the nut for food, either as a curry along with their rice, or as a flavoring to cakes made of rice and sugar; the shell serves for drinking cups and primeval spoons; the husky fibre of course makes string, rope, and matting; the oil pressed from the nut, in creaking antique mills worked by oxen, is quite an article of commerce, and is used for anointing their hair and bodies, as well as for their little brass lamps and other purposes ”

“ The cocoanut palm clusters in dense groves along the beaches, the long leaves murmuring to the sea breeze as they wave to and fro, casting their grateful shade upon the native village. Of all trees none is more useful to tropical man than the cocoanut. ”

“ Sometimes, on the contrary, the hairs are very much reduced in number, as, for instance, in some species of Æschynanthus, where there are only three, one on one side and two on the other. In this case, moreover, the hairs are very flexible, and wrap round the wool of any animal with which they may come in contact, so that they form a double means of dispersion.
In other cases seeds are wafted by water. Of this the cocoanut is one of the most striking examples. The seeds retain their vitality for a considerable time, and the loose texture of the husk protects them and makes them float. ”

“ The leaves are four fathoms, or four and a half long, at the very top of the tree, and serve excellently for thatching houses. At the bottom of the leaves the cocoa nuts grow in clusters of ten, fifteen, or twenty, hanging by a small string which is full of joints. Each nut, with its outer rind, is larger than a man's head, and within this outer rind is a hard woody shell which will hold near a quart of liquid. The nut or kernel lines the inside of this shell, and within this kernel is about a pint and half of pure clear water, very cool, sweet, and pleasant. ”

“ The number of these trees in the island is estimated to be twenty millions, which yield from seven to eight hundred million cocoanuts annually, and are worth ten million dollars. These trees are carefully guarded at night when the fruit is ready to pick. The natives climb these tall, smooth trunks with great agility, partly by the aid of bamboo ladders, and oftener with the help of a short band of cocoanut fibre between the feet or around the loins. ”

“ The cocoanut tree springs up everywhere, but in the spots where yams and taros are grown the sand is hollowed out, and a pit formed, from one to two hundred yards long, and of varying width, into which decaying cocoanut leaves and refuse are thrown, till a rich soil is formed. [1] It is certain, however, that among the Polynesians the cocoanut is a cultivated plant no less than the yam, taro, sweet-potato, sugar-cane, banana, breadfruit and numerous other species found in use throughout the tropical islands of the Pacific. ”