Béte-ni-Pié.
347
and taking therefrom something revolting, which, as he pressed it in his hand, looked like a long thick bundle of dried centipedes. — " Touch them," he said, holding out to me the mass of articulated flat bodies and bristling legs. — " Not for anything !" I replied, in astonished disgust. H e laughed, and opened his hand. A s he did so, the mass expanded. . . . — " Now look," he exclaimed ! Then I saw that all the bodies were united at the tails —grew together upon one thick flat annulated stalk . . . a plant!—"But here is the fruit," he continued, taking from the same drawer a beautifully embossed ovoid nut, large as a duck's egg, ruddy-colored, and so exquisitely varnished by nature as to resemble a rosewood carving fresh from the hands of the cabinet-maker. In its proper place among the leaves and branches, it had the appearance of something delicious being devoured by a multitude of centipedes. Inside was a kernel, hard and heavy as iron-wood ; but this in time, I was told, falls into dust : though the beautiful shell remains always perfect. Negroes call it the coco-macaque.