nearly flat and level with the ground, and
a goat may, perchance, be seen standing on
it and contemplating the surrounding scenery.
The roots seem completely torn up, except a
few suckers on the undermost side, which
still have a slight hold of the soil. The nuts
are prematurely scattered on the beach.
The trunk, however, is bent upward; the
head is high in spite of misfortunes; the
falling tree is putting out fresh suckers.
The square form which the stem assumes
remains as the most singular record of the
disaster.

This feat of the coco-palm is beyond
denial. " When," says Dr. Charles Reynaud,
"a coco-palm has been uprooted by any
accident whatever, or even when the roots
encounter a soil upon which they cannot creep
solidly, or when it does not furnish them
with enough of nourishment, it pushes out a
great quantity of new roots from its swelled
base which diverge towards the soil. By this
admirable mechanism of nature, it assures its
stability, and, at the same time, it doubles the
organs destined to absorb the nutritive
elements. It is not rare to see the coco-
palms overthrown by a falling in of the earth,
and which hold still by a small number of
roots, without delay, (thanks to the means of
reparation we have indicated,) raise
themselves up towards their leafy end, vegetating
most beautifully, and so well that at the end
of several years they present the singular
spectacle of a trunk which may be said to
grow square." A lithograph, published by
Monsieur Pitot, of the Mauritius, lies before
me while I write, which represents a coco-
palm, three mouths after it has been knocked
down by a storm, in an attitude half raised
up, and partaking curiously of both the
prostrate and the erect positions.

The oaks and pines of Europe would never
think of trying such a feat, and could not do
it if they tried, on account of the structure of
their roots. The suckers of what is called
the axis of the root develope in them; and, in
the palms, they waste away. The roots of the
palms which are developed, are what are called
the secondary roots surrounding the axis.
Issuing separately out of the trunk, vertically
and horizontally, and straightly or twinedly,
they are only of about the thickness each of
a goose-quill, and do not penetrate far into
the sand. They seize the soil in a matted
and entangled manner for a range of about
twenty or thirty feet around the tree, and
form, by their interlacing, a solid mass amidst
the loose and sandy soil. At the side nearest
to the sea the roots extend sometimes as much
as forty feet; and, when laid bare, their usual
brown colour becomes blood-red under the
influence of the light. They are rather
flexible and tough, and have a somewhat hard
skin, which covers a spongy substance
continued from the trunk. The feat of the
fallen coco-palm in raising itself up, is not
without its parallels in the vegetal world.
As everybody knows, when a young willow
is planted topsy-turvy, although the aerial
buds do not become roots, the trunk sends
forth new roots tipped with spongioles to
receive food from the humidity around them.

The oak and the palm are indeed vegetal
antipodes, if I may use a learned word for a
fact literally and naturally true. Their roots
point at each other through the width of the
earth; they contradict each other flatly
respecting night and day, summer and winter,
seed-time and harvest, and they have entirely
different notions respecting most of the modes
of vegetal growth and life. The oak has
branches, while the palm shoots straight up
without them. When a cut is made across a
branch of an oak, each year's growth is seen
recorded in successive layers of fibres; when
a cut is made in the trunk of a palm, the
bunches of fibres appear to be dispersed
irregularly. The differences are so remarkable,
that a French botanist divides the
vegetal world according to them. The wood
which surrounds the circumference of the
coco-palm is very hard and almost horny;
the interior is tender, of a rosy colour, and
hardens as the tree ages. If an adult tree
is cut, the interior will corrupt into dust,
and the rind part will scarcely be fit to form
laths. If an old coco-palm, is cut, the wood
will be found to be of the colour of a beautiful
chocolate, streaked lengthwise with little
veins as hard as ivory.

The coco-palm bears five new leaves to
replace five old leaves every year. The scars
left by the fallen leaves upon the trunk would
be a satisfactory record of its age if they were
not too much obliterated and confused. The
leaves, to the number of from twenty to
twenty-five, are arranged spirally, and form a
crown around the top of the column. The
leaf is like a quill, twenty feet long; and
the follioles, or barbs of the feathery leaf,
have the forms of swords.

The flowers of the coco-palm are enclosed
in a sheath, four or five feet long, and four or
five inches thick, which is triangular in the
middle and conical at the summit. The
sheath is streaked white and green, and with
time hardens and grows brown until it
becomes horny. The sheath issues out of the
armpit of a leaf; and out of the sheath comes
sidewise the branching sheathlet or spadice,
whose graceful branches, at first white and
then brilliantly golden, seem proud (as all
nature is) of their reproductive force and
beauty. White when they first issue from the
sheathlet, the flowers of the coco-palm grow
gradually yellow; and then the male flowers
become greenish and the female flowers green.
After a time, first the male and then the
female flowers fall, and while most of the
ovaries wither away, the fifteen or twenty
fecundated ovaries develope in the form of
little balls. Each ovary consists of three
lodges, two of which atrophy, leaving only one,
which enlarges as a single cavity, with white