"Certainly I will, dear," was the reply. "I fully intended to do so, for the cocoanut-palm is too valuable a member of the family to be passed over. This species does not grow in Palestine, and it is not one of the trees of the Bible; its home is in the warmest countries, and it grows most luxuriantly in the islands of the tropics or near the seacoast on the main-lands. Although its general form is similar to that of the date-palm, the foliage and fruit are quite different. The leaves are very much broader, and they have not the light, airy look of the foliage of the date-palm. But 'the cocoanut-palm is the most valuable of Nature's gifts to the inhabitants of those parts of the tropics where it grows, and its hundred uses, as they are not inaptly called, extend beyond the tropics over the civilized world. The beautiful islands of the southern seas are fringed with cocoanut-palms that encircle them as with a green and feathery belt. The ripe nuts drop into the sea, but, protected by their husks, they float away until the tide washes them on to the shore of some neighboring island, where they can take root and grow.'"