SQUIRRELS AND COCOANUTS.
Tne EDITOR OF THE "SPROTATOR."1 SIR,—Your correspondent "E. P." (Spectator, March 7th) would probably be surprised to learn all the uses of the cocoa- nut besides those which his observation has discovered. That of providing a favourite diet for squirrels is less gratifying to those who make their living by growing the nut than it evidently is to " E. P." Polecats and other animals of the squirrel kind are so passionately devoted to this form of food that in countries where the cocoanut grows they know how to help themselves to it even without having the nut split for them, and hung up in convenient bushes; and it is amazing how the tiniest of the tribe manage to bore through the five or six inches of hard fibre which surround the nut as it grows on the tree. The cocoanut of Hampstead Heath, of course, is in reality nothing but the kernel of the nut. "E. P.," no doubt, knows that he wipes his feet on cocoanuts, and treads upon others as he walks up the aisle in church (in the form of coir). But I wonder if he has ever realised that the house- maid washes her dishes with cocoanuts in the form of soap, and that the cook very probably cooks " E. P.'s " food in cocoanuts in the form of "vegetable lard " P Forgive my transports on a theme like this; but one might go on enumerating the uses of the cocoanut through a whole column
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