COYOLLI AND MARON, 269 
Our modern curiosity as to how the cocoanut and other plants crossed 
the Pacific had not yet developed. Hernandez learned about the Phil- 
ippine plants by questioning travelers who were going and coming 
across Mexico, but this was a matter far different from the introduc- 
tion of the Philippine palms to use and culture in Mexico, which with 
three more centuries of improved opportunity has not yet taken place. 
Chocolate was certainly a far more important article to the Spaniards 
than the cocoanut, and yet the cacao tree is believed not to have been 
introduced from Mexico to the Philippines until after 1660, a century 
later than Hernandez’s visit; and Humboldt. believed that C7trus tri- 
SJoliata was the only Asiatic species which had become established in 
Mexico.’ This would seem to render improbable any very extensive 
introductions of tropical plants at an earlier date, and is a strong 
reminder that notwithstanding its obvious importance the introduction 
of useful plants is a subject still generally neglected in the agriculture 
of the most advanced countries, and even in dealing with plants which 
‘an be grown from seed of indefinite vitality instead of with the deli- 
cate and short-lived germs of tropical species. 
But to return to Hernandez. We find in the sentence already quoted? 
the name maron ascribed to the ‘vulgus Indorum,” or ordinary 
Indians, as distinguished from the ‘* Mexicensibus,” a fact which 
seems to have been entirely overlooked by De Candolle, who, after 
dismissing coyol//, leaves us with the implication that no genuine 
American name for the cocoanut was known. Possibly he supposed 
this word to pertain to the East Indies, as does much of the essay of 
Hernandez. Such, however, is not the case. Nothing resembling 
maron appears in the extensive lists of Polynesian, Malayan, and 
Asiatic names, but it was reported by Heller, in 1853, as apparently 
still in use in southern Mexico. 
But etymological arguments based on old records are often of little 
use except as literary confirmations of facts already ascertained by 
more reliable evidence. Thus, the cocoa question might be carried 
another stage around the world when we read, in Pigafetta’s account 
of the voyage of Magellan, that among the native products offered by 
the people of the Philippine island of Samar that ‘Sone which they 
eall coche is the fruit which the palm trees bear.” But as no subse- 
quent traveler has recorded such a name in that quarter of the globe, 
we may reflect that Pigafetta was an Italian among Spaniards and 
Portuguese sailors, some of whom had previously visited the ‘‘ Indies,” 
and that he did not show a philologist’s caution in studying the forms 
and origins of words. 
Although, as indicated above, the cocoanut is supposed to have been 
1! Loe. cit., vol. 2, p. 365, *P. 267, footnote. 
