f its
taste can be formed from the half-rancid fluid in the ripe nuts sold
in Europe or America. It must be drunk soon after being taken from
the tree to know its full delights, and must have been gathered at
the stage of growth called _koie_, when there is no pulp within the
shell.

Not long after this time the pulp, white as snow, of the consistency
and appearance of the white of a soft-boiled egg, forms in a thin
layer about the walls of the nut. This is a delicious food, and from
it are made many dishes, puddings, and cakes. It is no more like the
shredded cocoanut of commerce than the peach plucked from the tree
is like the tinned fruit.

The pulp hardens and thickens as time goes on, and finally is an
inch in thickness. Occasionally the meat when hard and ripe is
broiled and eaten. I like it fairly well served in this fashion.

If left on the tree, the nut will in time fall, and in due course
there begins in it a marvelous process of germination. A sweet,
whitish sponge forms in the interior, starting from the inner end of
the seed enclosed in the kernel, opposite one of the three eyes in
the smaller end of the nut. This sponge drinks up all the liquid, and,
filling the inside, melts the hard meat, absorbs it, and turns it
into a cellular substance, while a white bud, hard and powerful,
pushes its way through one of the eyes of the shell, bores through
several inches of husk, and reaches the air and light.

This bud now unfolds green leaves, and at the same period two other
buds, beginning at the same point, find their way to the two other
eyes and pierce them, turning down instead of up, and forcing their
way through the former husk outside the shell, enter the ground.
Though no knife could cut the shell, the life within bursts it open,
and husk and shell decay and fertilize the soil beside the new roots,
which, within five or six years, have raised a tree eight or nine
feet high, itself bearing nuts to reproduce their kind again.

All about me on the fertile soil, among decaying leaves and
luxuriant vines, I saw these nuts, carrying on their mysterious and
powerful life in the unheeded forest depths. Here and there a
half-domestic pig was harrying one with thrusting snout. These pigs,
which we think stupid, know well that the sun will the sooner cause
a sprouting nut to break open, and they roll the fallen nut into the
sunlight to hasten their stomachs' gratification, though with
sufficient labor they can