Nuts, like fruit, form an important article of commerce. The most wonderful nut in the world is the coconut, and it is the fruit of perhaps the most wonderful tree in the world-the coconut palm.
This tree, we already know, has nothing whatever todo with the cocoa-tree, which supplies the material for the well-known beverage. It is very widely distributedthroughout the tropics, and is to be met with in the East and West Indies, in Central America, in India and Ceylon, and in all the islands of the Pacific and Indian Archipelagoes. In Ceylon there are extensive plantations of these palms, said to contain no fewer than twenty millions of trees.
The trees are usually found fringing the low shores. They are stately trees, rising often to the height of 100 feet; the summit is crowned with feathery leaves from 12 to 15 feet in length. They bear immense bunches of flowers, and when these die off, they give place to the fruit-the coconut of commerce. The tree usually bearsabout sixty nuts each year.
The nuts, as we see them in the shops, have been stripped of their outer covering, which is a thick, fibrous case, or husk. This supplies the material for coconut matting, brushes, etc.
To the natives of the lands where it grows this tree is invaluable; its uses are said to equal in number the days of the year. They build their houses, and make every utensil and household article they require from the wood of the trunk. They thatch their houses with the leaves, and the fibrous husk of the nut supplies them with material for matting. The nut itself forms an important part of their food; the milk supplies them with drink, and they make palm wine and arrack-a spirituous liquor-from thefermented juice or sap of the flowers. From the kernel ofthe nut coconut oil is obtained. The timber of the trunk is also a valuable article of commerce, known as porcupine wood.
England imports annually about ?300,000 worth of cocoa-nut oil from India and Ceylon. Most of it is used in the manufacture of marine soap-a soap that will form a lather with seawater.
Among the other common nuts are the filbert, walnut, almond, chestnut, and Brazil nut. Hazelnuts and filberts are natives of England, but they import large quantities from Spain, under the name of Barcelona nuts.
The walnut is also grown in England, but they import many thousand bushels every year from Germany and the South of France. The almond belongs to the countries bordering on the Mediterranean. There are several varieties-the sweet, the bitter, the Valencia, and theJordan almond. The last has nothing to do with the riverJordan. The name is a corruption of jardin, the French word for garden. The chestnut is extensively grown in Spain and Italy. The people of Lombardy mix chestnuts with their lupin meal to make their bread. Chestnuts are largely imported from Holland and Belgium. The Brazil nut is the fruit of a large tree which grows mostly in the region near the Orinoco. The fruit is a smooth, round case, half as big as a man"s head, and in it the three-sided nuts are packed closely together, as many as twenty or thirty in one case. It is extremely dangerous to pass underthe trees when the fruit is growing ripe; for the nut cases, owing to their great weight, frequently fall as they ripen.
The natives have a novel way of obtaining the nuts without the trouble of climbing the tall trees. The forests are swarming with monkeys. They chase the monkeys into the trees, and then pelt them with small pebbles. The monkeys, in turn, pluck the nut-cases from the trees, andhurl them down at their assailants.
