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
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. 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.
