DAMPIER AND HERNANDEZ. 965 
But this is not the modern Cocos Island, as De Candolle seems to 
have supposed: 
The navigators Dampier and Vancouver found it at the beginning of the seven- 
teenth century, forming woods in the islands near Panama—not on the mainland— 
and in the Isle of Cocos, situated at 300 miles from the continent in the Pacific. At 
that time these islands were uninhabited.! 
Indeed, with the above passage in view, it is difficult to believe that 
De Candolle had a personal acquaintance with Dampier’s * Voyages,’ 
since in two places it distinctly says that that worthy did not visit 
Cocos Island, though making a large number of references to the 
cocoanut palm and the banana as occurring on the American mainland 
all the way from Ecuador to Mexico, not only about the Spanish 
settlements but among the wild tribes of the Colombian coast, with 
whom he obtained friendship because of the common enmity to the 
Spaniards. Like Oviedo nearly two centuries before, he found Point 
Burica, the southern extremity of Costa Rica, ** full of coco-nut-trees.” ” 
Francisco Hernandez also wrote, in the sixteenth century, what still 
remains the largest contribution to Mexican botany. He describes 
and figures the cocoanut among the western Indies (ocesdentales Indos), 
but his account was evidently derived largely from travelers who had 
visited the Philippines, and as Hernandez also states that the tree did 
not occur in ** New Spain” he has been quoted in proof of the non- 
existence of the cocoanut in America in pre-Spanish times, an infer- 
ence which will receive attention in connection with the American 
names of the cocoanut. 
The mistake regarding the statements of Hernandez has, however, 
served a useful purpose in calling forth from Velasco a definite state- 
ment regarding the pre-Spanish existence of the species in America. 
This assertion was fully credited by the botanist Spruce, the most 
recent and careful student of South American palins. 
It is curious that, of the early Spanish writers on the natural history of the New 
World, those who knew only the eastern side of the continent, the West Indian 
Islands, and Mexico, such as Hernandez and Oviedo,’ assert that the coco palm was 
introduced into America by the Spanish settlers, while those who were familiar 
with the Pacific coast, including some of the earliest travelers in Peru, such as Cieza 
de Leon, say positively that it was already found growing on that coast, especially 
in the equatorial regions, when the Spaniards first arrived there. It is possible that 
all spoke truly according to their knowledge, and that, although this plant may be 
indigenous only to the islands of the Pacific Ocean, it had really reached the western 
coast of America, either by accident or by design, long before the advent of the 
white man. 
' Origin of Cultivated Plants, London, p. 431 (1886). 
?Dampier’s Voyages, London, vol. 4, p. 90 (1729). 
8Spruce, Journ. Linn. Soc. London, vol. 11, p. 80 (1871). As neither Hernandez 
nor Oviedo refers to any such introduction, it would seem that this statement, like 
many others regarding the cocoanut, must be taken as a result of the failure to con- 
sult original authors, 
