274 ORIGIN AND DISTRIBUTION OF THE COCOA PALM. 
the cocoanut. Many of the details are fanciful, but Seeman, who gave 
the matter thorough study, was inclined to credit the principal points. 
The littoral parts of Ceylon are now densely covered with this tree, and it looks 
more at home there than I have ever seen it in any part of the world. Yet both 
tradition and history affirm that at one time the cocoanut was unknown in Ceylon. 
Not far from Point de Galle there is carved on a rock the gigantic effigy of a native 
prince, Kottah Rayah, to whom is ascribed the discovery of the properties of .the 
cocoanut, which before his time were unknown, as was also the tree. Moreover, the 
oldest chronicle of Ceylon, the ‘‘ Marawansa,’’ the historical value of which is now 
fully admitted, is absolutely silent about everything relating to the cocoanut, whilst 
it never fails to record, with tedious minuteness, every accession of other fruit trees 
made to the plantations by native princes. Now, is it probable that a fruit like the 
cocoanut, which is often tossed about the ocean for months without losing its germi- 
nating power from the effects of salt water—is it probable that if such a fruit had been 
indigenous to any part of Asia, it should have reached Ceylon only in a compara- 
tively recent historical period?! 
From the limited distribution of the cocoanut and other tropical 
products St. Pierre deduced a confirmation of the formerly accepted 
brevity of the earth’s history, and while we can not make use of the 
argument for its original purpose, it may still be recommended to the 
attention of those who believe in an Asiatic origin and an aquatic 
distribution. 
T am persuaded, at the same time, that the greatest part of flitting plants must have 
a principal center, such as a steep rock, or an island in the midst of the sea, from 
whence they diffuse themselves over the rest of the world. This leads me to deduce, 
what I consider an irrefragable argument in support of the recent creation of our 
globe; it is this, were the globe of very remote antiquity, all the possible combina- 
tions of the propagation of plants by seed would have been already completed all 
over the world. Thus, for example, there would not be an uninhabited island and 
shore of the seas of India, which you would not find planted with cocoa trees, and 
sown with cocoanuts, which the ocean wafts thither every vear, and which it scat- 
ters alternately on their strands by means of the variety of its monsoons and of its 
currents. Now, it is unquestionably certain, that. the radiations of that tree and its 
fruit, the principal focusses of which are in the Maldivia Islands, are not hitherto 
diffused over all the islands of the Indian Ocean . . . . There are, in like manner, a 
multitude of other fruits between the Tropics, of which the primordial stocks are in 
the Molluccas, in the Philippines, in the islands of the South Sea, and which are 
entirely unknown on the coasts of both continents . . . . [shall pursue this reflee- 
tion no farther; but it evidently demonstrates the newness of the world. Were it 
eternal, and exempted from the care of a Providence, its vegetables would long since 
have undergone all the possible combinations of the chance which resows them. We 
should find their different species in every situation where it was possible for them 
to grow. 
It may be that neither the evidence adduced by Seeman nor the 
quaint deductions of St. Pierre can be considered to have important 
bearing upon the question, but their views are of interest because the 
inferences they suggest are in accord with so many other considera- 
tions tending to prove an extra-Asiatie origin for the cocoanut. 
‘Flora Vitiensis, p. 276. 
