BÊTE-NI-PIÉ. Two Years in the French West Indies | ||
IV.
—"IS there anything still living and lurking in old black drains of Thought,—any bigotry, any prejudice, anything in the moral world whereunto the centipede may be likened?"
—"Really, I do not know," replied the friend to whom I had put the question; "but you need only go as far as the vegetable world for a likeness. Did you ever see anything like this?" he added, opening a drawer
—"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. He laughed, and opened his hand. As 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.
BÊTE-NI-PIÉ. Two Years in the French West Indies | ||