970 ORIGIN AND DISTRIBUTION OF THE COCOA PALM. 
introduced into Brazil by the Portuguese, Nieuhoff recorded a native 
name for it in 1647. 
There also grow coco trees in Brasil, called by the natives inajaguacuiba, and the 
fruit inajaguacu.! 
But, as Nieuhoff had already explained that the fruit of the pindava 
palm (Maximiliana?) was called ¢najaiera,m -aning “small cocoanut,” 
we may be dealing, as in the case of coyoll7, with a recently extended 
use of some native word or combination misinterpreted by Nieuhoff. 
THE COCOA PALM AN AMERICAN SPECIES. 
BOTANICAL EVIDENCE. 
If the historical evidence is ample for the establishment of the exist- 
ence of the cocoanut in America before the advent of Europeans, the 
botanical evidence is no less conclusive to the effect that it had been 
there a long time. In other words, it is a member of the American 
and not of the Asiatic flora, though the reasons for this belief have 
been very inadequately appreciated. Thus, De Candolle noted the 
existence of eleven other American species of Cocos as one of the argu- 
ments for the American origin of C. nucifera, though this fact 
appeared to be outweighed by others indicating an Asiatic nativity. 
It is not, however, 2 matter of eleven or more species of Cocos, but 
of the whole family Cocaceae, consisting of about 20 genera and 200 
species, all strictly American with the single exception of the rather 
aberrant African oil palm (/¢lae/s guinecnsis), which has, however, 
an American relative referred to the same genus. Several fossil 
palms from western Europe are supposed to belong to this group, but 
the cocoanut is the sole? representative which has been connected with 
Asia and the Malay region, though no reason has ever been advanced 
to show why the other members of the group could not have estab- 
lished themselves and maintained an existence under Malayan condi- 
tions, which are in every way adapted to palms, and which support 
hundreds of indigenous species belonging to other families of the group. 
Nor do we any longer take refuge in a suggestion formerly used in deal- 
ing with difficult cases of geographical distribution, and argue that the 
cocoanut and the banana were such desirable fruits that they were sepa- 
rately created or bestowed upon the inhabitants of both hemispheres. 
The theory of the independent development of the same species, how- 
ever, is still occasionally drawn upon, and may have a certain propriety 
in dealing with the phylogeny of groups which have undergone a par- 
allel development. Thus, if other species of Cocos, or closely allied 
genera, existed in the tropics of the eastern hemisphere, we might not 
'Churchill’s Travels, vol. 2, p. 134 (1752). 
2 Cocos mammilaris Blanco, from the Philippines, is based on one of the numerous 
Malayan culture varieties of CL nucifera. 
