 meat
embalms the bodies of the dead.
    The noble trunk itself is far from being valueless. Sawn into posts, it
upholds the islander's dwelling; converted into charcoal, it cooks his food; and
supported on blocks of stones, rails in his lands. He impels his canoe through
the water with a paddle of the wood, and goes to battle with clubs and spears of
the same hard material.
    In pagan Tahiti, a cocoa-nut branch was the symbol of regal authority. Laid
upon the sacrifice in the temple, it made the offering sacred; and with it the
priests chastised and put to flight the evil spirits which assailed them. The
supreme majesty of Oro, the great god of their mythology, was declared in the
cocoa-nut log from which his image was rudely carved. Upon one of the Tonga
Islands, there stands a living tree revered itself as a deity. Even upon the
Sandwich Islands, the cocoa-palm retains all its ancient reputation; the people
there having thought of adopting it as the national emblem.
    The cocoa-nut is planted as follows: Selecting a suitable place, you drop
into the ground a fully ripe nut, and leave it. In a few days, a thin,
lance-like shoot forces itself through a minute hole in the shell, pierces the
husk, and soon unfolds three pale-green leaves in the air; while originating, in
the same soft white sponge which now completely fills the nut, a pair of fibrous
roots, pushing away the stoppers which close two holes in an opposite direction,
penetrate the shell, and strike vertically into the ground. A day or two more,
and the shell and husk which, in the last and germinating stage of the nut, are
so hard that a knife will scarcely make any impression, spontaneously burst by
some force within; and, henceforth, the hardy young plant thrives apace; and
needing no culture, pruning, or attention of any sort, rapidly arrives at
maturity. In four or five years it bears; in twice as many more, it begins to
lift its head among the groves, where, waxing strong, it flourishes for near a
century.
    Thus, as some voyager has said, the man who but drops one of these nuts into
the ground, may be said to confer a greater and more certain benefit upon
himself and posterity than many a life's toil in less genial climes.
    The fruitfulness of the tree is remarkable. As long as it lives, it bears;
and without intermission. Two hundred nuts, besides innumerable white blossoms
of others
