nstantaneously fell; persons who had been the
fortunate possessors of a nut or two, were ruined; and so little did
the French captain gain by his cargo, that he disclosed the secret of
its origin to an English mercantile house, which completed the utter
downfall of the nut of Solomon, by landing another cargo of it at
Bombay during the same year.

A singular circumstance in connection with the discovery of the tree,
a complete exemplification of the good old tale, _Eyes and no Eyes_,
is worthy of record, as a lesson to all, that they should ever make
proper use of the organs which God has bestowed upon them for the
acquisition of useful knowledge. Mahe de la Bourdonnais, one of the
best and wisest of French colonial governors, whose name, almost
unknown to history, is embalmed for ever in St Pierre's beautiful
romance of _Paul and Virginia_, sent from the Isle of France, in 1743,
a naval officer named Picault, to explore the cluster of islands now
known as the Seychelles. Picault made a pretty correct survey, and in
the course of it discovered some islands previously unknown; one of
these he named Palmiers, on account of the abundance and beauty of the
palm-trees that grew upon it; that was all he knew about them. In
1768, a subsequent governor of the Isle of France sent out another
expedition, under Captain Duchemin, for a similar purpose. Barre, the
hydrographer of this last expedition, landing on Palmiers, at once
discovered that the palms, from which the island had, a quarter of a
century previously, received its name, produced the famous and
long-sought-for _cocos de mer_. Barre informed Duchemin, and the twain
kept the secret to themselves. Immediately after their return to the
Isle of France, they fitted out a vessel, sailed to Palmiers, and
having loaded with nuts, proceeded to Calcutta. How their speculation
turned out, we have already related. We should add that Duchemin, in
his vain expectation of making an immense fortune by the discovery,
considering that the name of the island might afford future
adventurers a clue to his secret, artfully changed it to Praslin, the
name of the then intendant of marine, which it still retains.

We shall speak no more of the Tree of Solomon; it is the _Lodoicea
Seychellarum_--the double cocoa-nut of the Seychelles--as modern
botanists term it, that we have now to deal with. As its name implies,
it is a palm, and one of the most nobly-graceful of that family, which
have bee