This palm (Cocos nucifera) is one of the most useful of the extensive family to which it belongs, supplying food, clothing, materials for houses, utensils of various kinds, rope and oil; and some of its products, particularly the two last, form important articles of commerce.  An old writer, in a curious discourse on palm trees, read before the Royal Society, in 1688, says, “The coco nut palm is alone sufficient to build, rig, and freight a ship with bread, wine, water, oil, vinegar, sugar, and other commodities.  I have sailed (he adds) in vessels where the bottom and the whole cargo hath been from the munificence of this palm tree.  I will take upon me to make good what I have asserted.”  And then he proceeds to describe and enumerate each product.  Another recent popular writer speaks in eloquent terms of the estimation in which it is held, and the various uses to which it is applied.

“Its very aspect is imposing.  Asserting its supremacy by an erect and lofty bearing, it may be said to compare with other trees, as man with inferior creatures.  The blessings it confers are incalculable.  Year after year the islander reposes beneath its shade, both eating and drinking of its fruit; he thatches his hut with its boughs, and weaves them into baskets to carry his food; he cools himself with a fan plaited from the young leaflets, and shields his head from the sun by a bonnet of the leaves; sometimes he clothes himself with the cloth-like substance which wraps round the base of the stalks, whose elastic rods, strung with filberts, are used as a taper.  The larger nuts, thinned and polished, furnish him with a beautiful goblet; the smaller ones with bowls for his pipes; the dry husks kindle his fires; their fibres are twisted into fishing-lines and cords for his canoes.  He heals his wounds with a balsam compounded from the juice of the nut; and with the oil extracted from its pulp 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 coco-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 coco-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 coco palm retains all its ancient reputation; the people there having thought of adopting it as the national emblem.”

Besides the foregoing and following uses, I am aware of several scents and spirituous liquors being procured from the flowers and pulp of the coco-nut.