Page:Tales in Political Economy by Millicent Garrett Fawcett.djvu/66

 trees would be unripe, then the value of the few that were fit for use would rise immensely. At another time, a hurricane would blow down a dozen of the trees, and their fruit could then be picked up with much less labour than when it was necessary to climb to the top of the trees to get them. This would cause the value of the nuts rapidly to decline for a time, when, perhaps, some other accident would again make their value as rapidly rise. These variations in value led to very unpleasant consequences; for instance, Collins, perhaps, would want to buy a bedstead of the carpenter, and agree to give him a certain number of cocoa-nuts for it when it was finished. It took a month to finish, and during that time cocoa-nuts, instead of being plentiful and easy to obtain, had become very scarce, owing to the trees having been attacked by monkeys, who had carried off two-thirds of the nuts. Collins, therefore, found at the end of the month that it was very difficult for him to carry out his part of the bargain, and that he could only obtain the cocoa-nuts with which he had to make his payment by twice the amount of