ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE OF THE COCOANUT. 271 
«be confident regarding the affinities of a tvpe so different from its con- 
geners as is the cocoanut.’ But with no oriental relatives in even 
generic range there is no rational basis for doubt that the species 
belongs to an American series. 
Under an evolutionary conception of nature we must believe that 
economic species like all others originated in definite areas, and that 
they have been domesticated at definite periods and distributed by 
naturalmeans. ‘There may, of course, have been independent discoy- 
eries of the usefulness of well-developed and already desirable fruits, 
and many such fruits have remained in the Tropics comparatively little 
affected by cultural selection. Of this, the several species of Anona 
furnish good examples. The sour-sop, the sweet-sop, and the custard 
apple are American fruits which probably reached in their wild state 
something near their present degree of excellence. Although now 
widely distributed throughout the Tropics, they are usually planted 
ina rather desultory manner and do not receive the same amount 
or kind of attention bestowed upon staple food plants or commercial 
products. As already remarked, the cocoanut as a fruit is of primary 
importance only in the coral islands of the Pacific, where the number 
of economic plants is limited, and where even fresh water is some- 
times wanting, and only the milk of the cocoanut makes human life 
possible. In America the relative value of the cocoanut places it in 
the list with such natural products as the Anonas, with which it agrees 
in offering little differentiation of varieties. 
PREHISTORIC INTRODUCTION OF OTHER PLANTS. 
A wild product of secondary value may not receive careful attention 
until quite late in the history of an agricultural people; but, on the 
other hand, it is impossible to agree with Dr. Watt’ that such staple 
food plants as the yams were ‘*cultivated at a much later date than 
most other vegetables, probably on account of the fact that without 
the trouble of cultivation they afforded an unfailing supply of food.” 
This theory is altogether too ingenious. Primitive peoples are not 
likely to have undertaken to cultivate anything the utility of which 
had not been adequately demonstrated, and it is exactly with such 
plants as Dioscorea and Pachyrhizus that the beginnings of primitive 
agriculture might be expected.’ Watt’s theory, however, is of much 
'In reality Cocos should be treated as a monotypic genus to contain only C. nucifera, 
The remaining species also are not a natural assemblage and should be separated into 
several generic groups. 
? Dictionary of the Economic Products of India, vol. 3, p. 120. 
Seeman has noted (Botany of the Herald, p. 75) that, with the exception of the 
potato (Solanum), the root crops cultivated on the Isthmus of Panama, the yam 
(Dioscorea alata), yuca (Manihot), camote (Batatas), and otd (Colocasia), are all 
propagated by cuttings of great vitality, which ‘may be left for weeks in the field, 
exposed to sun and rain, without receiving any injury.”’ 
