A BEAUTIFUL AND USEFUL TREE

MORE than four hundred years ago, the Portuguese, adventuring on unknown seas, discovered a group of islands in the Indian Ocean lying some six hundred miles northeast of the northernmost tip of Madagascar. They were mountainous and beautiful, covered with luxuriant vegetation. Here and there were groups of strange palm-trees, some growing to a height of a hundred feet and each with a crown of gigantic leaves. On these trees were growing the largest and most curious fruit the sailors had ever seen, great double cocoanuts, each weighing forty or fifty pounds and containing inside its thick shell four great nuts half a yard in length.

But few people heard of this discovery, and for a century longer, when such of these nuts as had fallen into the sea were driven by wind and currents to distant shores, all sorts of stories were told about

them,-one.being that they grew on submarine palm-trees, and they were called by French navigators, who found the empty shells floating in the Indian Ocean, cocode-mer, or sea-cocoanut. But the French finally re-discovered the islands where the Portuguese had landed long before, and then the mystery of years was solved, for they found the ground strewn with the huge nuts, which, they learned later, take ten years to ripen.

Since the French occupancy, in 1756, the group of islands have been known as the Seychelles Archipelago; hence the botanical name given the palm is Lodoicea sechellarum.

While we know the original home of this particular cocoanut,-the coco-de-mer, it is impossible to tell where the ordinary variety (Cocos nucifera) first grew, for it is found flourishing in most tropical regions, especially on islands or near the sea. Many of the nuts drop into the water that

surrounds their island homes, and, protected by their leathery skin and thick, fibrous husks, float away and in time are washed ashore, perhaps hundreds of miles distant from the parent tree. There they take root, and a little-palm tree begins to thrust itself up to the light, finding its home to be, perhaps, a lonely coral island, too small to be set down on the charts.

The height of these trees averages from fifty to ninety feet; their trunks are from one to two feet in diameter and bear no branches, but their tops are crowned with sixteen to twenty graceful leaves, turning downward, each about fifteen feet long. Mark Twain aptly describes them as "feather-dusters, high in air." Often the trunks are blown by the winds to more or less of an angle, but the roots are so well stayed that the trees do not fall.

One leaf is produced each year, and thus the age of a tree may easily be determined by counting the scars left on the trunk where the leaves have dropped. The nuts, each protected by a thick threecornered husk, grow beneath the leaves in clusters of ten to twenty, a thrifty tree (beginning at its fourth to its seventh

nuts annually, and bearing for seventy or eighty years. A grove of these trees is not a safe place for a walk, when the fruit is maturing, as to be struck by a falling nut might easily prove fatal. Besides producing cocoanuts for food, this palm has many other uses. The terminal buds of the stems are considered a great delicacy and are known as "palm cabbages." The leaves are used for hats, baskets, mats, fans, and as a thatch for roofs. The

A COCOANUT CLUSTER

NATIVE CLIMBING A COCOANUT-PALM AT OAHU

polish, being exported, under the name of porcupine wood, for cabinet work. The nut meat, dried in the sun, is known as copra, and forms a valuable and staple article of commerce, a thousand nuts making five hundred pounds of copra, which in turn produce twenty-five gallons of cocoanut oil. From the fiber is made a material for cordage, cables, and mats, called "coir."

So you can see that a cocoanut grove may be a valuable possession; indeed, in Ceylon, where there are 20,000,000 of these trees, a man's wealth is reckoned by the number that he owns.

CLARA SPALDING ELLIS.

FRANCE, MARCH 12, 1918. DEAR TOWNIE:

WE'RE nearly all packed up, and the next letter Daddy writes will tell you all about aëroplane fights, and the big guns, and French soldiers, and French towns that the bad Germans had early in the war before the Frenchers and the Foreign Legion drove them out; so they won't be pretty little towns like this, but like the pictures Mother can show you in the Sunday papers. But I promised to tell you all about the Marines on long hikes and how we learn to lick the old Germans with their square heads. Nearly every day we'd start out about six or seven o'clock and not get back till almost dark. And it did n't make any difference if it was raining all day or snow on the ground or sunny. And most of the time there was n't enough sun to warm a pussycat's tail, but the wind was cold and blowing, and snow on the hills, and the roads full of mud. So poor old Daddy would get up when it was still dark, and shave by

the time and scratch. Then he 'd put on his slicker, or poncho, to keep the rain and wind out, and his spurs; and the orderly would bring his horse up, and Daddy had so much clothes on and so many things hung on him that he felt like a Christmastree, and could hardly get on his horse. You ought to see the pretty French horse Daddy has, just the color of a light horsechestnut. First I had an old buckskin called Buck, but he was too fat and made as much noise, when he galloped, as 20 horses. So I got the new horse and called him Legion; but he likes to dance and cut up, and I got to saying, "Oh, Boy," all the time; so now I call him "Oh Boy." Sometimes we 'd start from this town, and sometimes from another town. And all the Marines would march from the other little towns and halt on the roads

just at the edge of the town. Then the majors would gallop up to the colonel and salute; and he 'd give orders, and away we would start. There'd be one big battalion and then the machine-guns and then the other two and the doctor's ambulances and then the funny rolling kitchens, one for each company, to make hot coffee and hot stew; but the Marines would always call it hot slum. And you ought to see the funny little mules dragging the machine-guns, with the drivers walking alongside. The mules are fine, and the men are very kind to them because they 're comical and always doing funny things. And they 're ten times as plucky as horses. They'd only have two little mules on the rolling kitchens that weighed a ton; and sometimes they'd get stuck going up hill, but keep right on pulling as if they were going straight on to eat up the old Kaiser. So the

THIS IS A SCOUT COMING

THROUGH THE WOODS

then the Marines would spread out in lines, and the battle would begin. But the "enemy" was always other Marines, so there was no real shooting; and Daddy would gallop up to the machine-guns with orders, and the little mules would gallop with the guns, and the men would whip and help too, and then train the guns on the enemy so the battalions could rush ahead and drive them back. Then, after it was all over and we had licked the others, the men would get their meat-cans and canteen cups out and line up, and Daddy would get two sandwiches and a hardboiled egg, out of his saddle-bags, and a cup of hot coffee. And then the colonel would tell the majors how all the battle went, and if they did n't do quite right; and then he 'd say, "March your outfits home!" And they 'd salute and say, “Aye, aye, sir!" just the way the Marines do aboard ship, and away they 'd go. One company had all the Marines who could play mouth-organs marching at the head, and all the other companies would whistle the tune. And they 'd get home with their shoes all wet and muddy; and awful tired because sometimes they 'd march 20 miles. So the officers would make them get their shoes and socks off and put on dry ones, and then how they would eat! And they 'd make fun of any Marine who dropped out and could n't keep up. And one terribly nasty day all the Marines in France and all the mules and machine-guns and wagons and rolling kitchens and the general

at the head went out, because we pretended the Germans were near and trying to blow up the railroad. So we had about 8000 Marines and about 500 mules, and it was better than any parade you ever saw. You could see it for miles. And all the time it was so cold and rainy that Daddy's feet got like ice, and he had to get off Oh Boy and walk. Then, after the 5th Scouts found the enemy sneaking up a hill just past a big woods, we had to wait for the old 5th; and the men ran up and down and some played tag in the fields to keep warm. And they played a funny game where a lot of them would stand in a circle and all face in to each other. Then one Marine would stand outside with a leather belt and yell, "Stand by!" Then they'd stoop over, as you do in leap-frog, but have one hand stuck out back. the Marine outside would run around and tap one; and then that Marine would fall out, and the one with the belt would chase him all around the ring; and if he could n't run fast enough, the one with the belt would beat him until he got back to his place. Then he 'd take the belt, and run around and tap some one else and chase him; and the other men would yell

零

And

THIS IS THE MARINES PLAYING THE BELT GAME and laugh, because they never knew who would be next. Then away we went and up a road through the woods and chased the enemy, and then had chow. Then the general said we had won and started us home, and we marched right past the others. And Daddy saw Wagner and Boller and lots of men and officers he had n't seen for a long time; and we kidded the others, and they kidded us, and everybody was jolly and laughing; and one Marine was singing, "Oh, for the life of a fireman!" So nobody made any fuss about the cold and