d--as is the
habit of supermarine arboreal produce--of falling to the ground.
Scarcely could a more splendid illustration of the fallacies of
hypothetical reasoning be found, than the pages that contain this
specious and far-fetched argument. Even the celebrated Rumphius, who
wrote so late as the eighteenth century, assures his readers that 'the
_Calappa laut_,' the Malay term for the nut, 'is not a terrestrial
production, which may have fallen by accident into the sea, and there
become hardened, as Garcias ab Horto relates, but a fruit, growing
itself in the sea, whose tree has hitherto been concealed from the eye
of man.' He also denominates it 'the wonderful miracle of nature, the
prince of all the many rare things that are found in the sea.'

In the fulness of time, knowledge is obtained and mysteries are
revealed. Chemistry and medicine, released from the tedious but not
useless apprenticeship they had served to alchemy and empiricism, set
up on their own account, and as a consequence, the 'nut of the sea'
soon lost its European reputation as a curative, though it was still
considered a very great curiosity, and the unsettled problem of its
origin formed a famous stock of building materials for the erecters of
theoretical edifices. In India and China, it retained its medicinal
fame, and commanded a high price. Like everything else that is brought
to market, the nuts varied in value. A small one would not realise
more than L.50, while a large one would be worth L.120; those,
however, that measured as much in breadth as in length were most
esteemed, and one measuring a foot in diameter was worth L.150
sterling money. Such continued to be the prices of these nuts for two
centuries after the ships of Europe had first found their way to the
seas and lands of Asia. But a change was at hand. In the year 1770, a
French merchant-ship entered the port of Calcutta. The motley
assemblage of native merchants and tradesmen, Baboos and Banians,
Dobashes, Dobies, and Dingy-wallahs, that crowd a European vessel's
deck on her first arrival in an Eastern port, were astounded when, to
their eager inquiries, the captain replied that his cargo consisted of
_cocos de mer_.[3] Scarcely could the incredulous and astonished
natives believe the evidence of their own eyesight, when, on the
hatches being opened, they saw that the ship was actually filled with
this rare and precious commodity. Rare and precious, to be so no
longer. Its price i