THE ACCIDENT TO JOHN AND THE RESTORATION OF MEMORY
The island yielded an abundance of nuts of various descriptions, the most prolific being the Brazil nut, which grows in the form of a large sphere, from three to four inches in diameter, the shell being very hard, like the cocoanut, and when broken open is found to be filled with the segmentally formed nuts which we all know.
This was gathered in large quantities, and was the principal source of oil which was used for the lamps, as they had no other means of illumination. To people in the habit of using the lighter mineral oils, and electricity, this was certainly primitive enough. The difficulty, however, with the gathering of the nuts was this: Unless gathered at a certain time it is almost impossible to express the oil, and if kept for any length of time, particularly in an unripe state, they would become very rancid.
George pondered over this for some time, and asked the Professor the cause of it. In response, he said: "Nature has a very peculiar way of protecting her products. It is the same with nuts, as it is with potatoes and fruit. Have you ever noticed how unripe fruit withers, when taken from the tree, and that potatoes shrivel up when they are dug up before fully matured?"
"That is the trouble with the whole batch of potatoes we now have."
"Unripe fruit and vegetables have an exterior coating which is porous and pervious to water when it is unripe. But when it fully ripens this coating is chemically changed into a thin, impervious coating of a cork-like structure, through which water cannot pass, and as a result potatoes, and fruit, will keep through an entire winter and become mellower and better as time goes on."
The colony was dependent for its supply of eggs on the numerous flocks of prairie chickens which were found in the abounding fields of grain, particularly barley. It was no trick to bag a half dozen of these birds at a shot, on account of their numbers, and, as before related, while Angel never ate any of them, he was the most persistent gatherer because the beautiful oval eggs attracted him, and George's cakes always appealed to his fancy.
The difficulty with Angel was he did not discriminate between the good and the bad eggs, and George was desirous of knowing how to distinguish between the fresh and spoilt ones.
As usual, the Professor was appealed to and he gave a standard rule for determining this: "As Angel brings in the eggs put them in a pail of water, and select only those which fall to the bottom and rest on the side. An egg several weeks old will remain at the bottom, but the large end will be much higher than the small end. If it is several months old the large end will be uppermost, with the small end pointing down; and if it is thoroughly rotten it will float at the top of the water, with the pointed side down."
"That is a very curious way of finding it out. I would like to know why the egg acts in that manner?"