by human skill on several volcanic
coasts; such as the island of Bourbon and the
Sandwich Islands.

Nuts which are carried by the ocean currents
as far north as the coasts of Scotland
and Norway, must reach many shores upon
which they perish of cold. It is said that
coco-palms do not thrive, even within the
tropics, upon shores washed by the cold
currents of the ocean. The Guinea current,
which flows past the Cape Verde islands
from the north, is probably a cause of the
comparative paucity of coco-palms upon their
shores. The combined study of the ocean
currents and the geographical distribution of
the coco-palms would probably reveal the
laws which have regulated the sowing of the
coco-seeds upon the tropical shores. It
teaches the principle upon which the ocean
works as a sowing-machine.

The coco floats like a little boat. The
form of the shell is so well adapted for navigation,
that it has been said mankind derived
from it their earliest notions of naval architecture.
When the nut becomes fibrous, and
ripens, and falls, it has acquired a specific
gravity lighter than sea-water, and the high-tide
waves easily waft it away. After voyaging
night and day, according to the direction
of the currents and being tossed by the
breakers, when it approaches a shore once
more, the coco has become heavier by the
saturation of the fibres with salt-water, and
has acquired a specific gravity which sinks
and imbeds it in the sand. Under the influences
of congenial soil and temperature, of
air and water, the coco germinates and takes
root.

There is surely something of divine intelligence
and providential goodness to be seen in
the delicate adjustments and arrangements
which sow in this way the food of millions
by the familiar agencies which throw the
neglected wrack upon the beach, to be eaten
by the sand-hoppers.

Civilisation has been, from its vast distance,
co-operating with Providence in disseminating
the blessings of the coco-palms,
by planting the seeds where the currents
could not carry them. Just men have often
given vent to cries of indignation against
the Europeans who have exterminated aboriginal
races to gratify their ruthless rapacity.
Every age and every country, without excepting
our own, has been disgraced by the atrocities
of men of this kind, whose names
seem likely to live in an immortality of execration.
Yet all is not said when the stigma
has been branded upon them. Their intelligent
and adventurous selfishness often made desert
places fertile. The Arabic, Portuguese,
Spanish, Dutch, French, and British voyagers
have planted coco-palms wherever their
vessels have sailed, or wherever any of their
settlements have rested. Many British sailors
have benevolently planted cocos when their
vessels have touched at a coast which was
barren of them. The Spaniards planted
coco-palms in the bay of Honduras; the
French established plantations called cocotieries
in the islands of the Mauritius;
the British cultivated them in the West
Indies. Owyhee, the island on which
Captain Cook was killed, although steep,
rocky, and volcanic, presents the singular
spectacle of snow on the tops of the mountains,
and coco-palms flourishing in the vicinity
of the coasts. Upon the whole, the
plantation of coco-palms shows what is called
civilisation in a somewhat favourable and
beneficent light, notwithstanding the serious
drawbacks of slavery, extermination, and
coco toddy. Observers and travellers say that
the more civilised of the Indians have begun
to fabricate coco toddy. There is more in
the fact than drunkenness and extermination
by fire-water; for, distillation is an
important part of chemistry, and chemistry
is one of the grandest instruments in the
hands of men.

The simple cultivation of the coco-palm
requires faculties far beyond the average
found among savages. The Indian law-giver
was a wise man who made the coco-growers
a high and right-hand caste, and
sought to apportion honour among men according
to the services rendered to society
by their skill, knowledge, foresight, self-denial,
industry, and genius. These qualities
are the salt necessary for the preservation of
races as of individuals.

It is strange that races of men should be
deficient in the reflecting prudence necessary
for their preservation in proportion as the
sun has dyed the colouring matter of their
skins. The white men of Europe and the
yellow men of Asia contrast very advantageously
with the reds of America and the
blacks of Africa. The coco-palm is cultivated
in Asia, from Bombay to the Ganges.
The small island of Ovington, opposite Bombay,
is covered with coco-palms. The shore
between Bombay and Canamore presents a
green curtain of shore palms whose picturesque
folds enrapture voyagers. Favoured
by the salt in the soil, they grow in all parts
of the province of Mysore. Near Pondicherry
there is a little coco island. They adorn
most of the gardens in Calcutta. Cultivated
for ornament, but sterile, the coco-palm
is found as far north as Lucknau, in the twenty-sixth
degree of latitude; in the twenty-third
degree of latitude, Dr. Dalton Hooker
found the coco-palm, the palm of high-tide
mark, six hundred feet above the level of
the sea.

There is said to be from ten to twelve millions
of coco-palms in the island of Ceylon.
There are eight or nine little coco islands in
the river Pahang, which are annually submerged
by the floods of the months of December
and January. Respecting the capital
of Cochin China, a French voyager says. "The
white walls of these fortifications were surmounted