These pilgrims always brought
home with them branches of palm, to show that they had really been to
the land where the tree grew; and so they were called _palmers_. To say
that such-a-one was a palmer was far more than to say that he was
a pilgrim."
"Miss Harson," said Clara, holding up one of the books, "here is a
picture called 'the cocoanut-palm,' but I didn't know that cocoanuts
grew on palm trees. Will you tell us something about it?"
[Illustration: COCOANUT-PALM TREES IN SOUTH-EASTERN AFRICA.]
"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.
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