280 ORIGIN AND DISTRIBUTION OF THE COCOA PALM. 
incredible that the nuts did not find their way ashore from shipwrecks, 
if indeed they were not commonly taken on land by those enyaged in 
drying the trepang. 
On the Queensland coast the finding of cocoanuts, and even the 
existence of an occasional ** wild” cocoa palm, within recent years 1s 
claimed by Hedley,' but he agrees that even the eating of the stranded 
nuts by the natives is no adequate explanation of the complete failure 
of the species to become established on any of the shores of the con- 
tinent, and if it be admitted that the absence of the cocoanut from 
Australia is due to its Inability to maintain an existence without the 
continuous help of man, rather than to the lack of all accidental 
opportunity to reach the shores of that continent, the probability that 
its general distribution is the result of human agency is greatly 
increased. For whatever be the real nature of the difficulty, it is 
evident that oceanic distribution has proved radically inefficient in the 
only instance where the factor of fostering human care was eliminated, 
and this not on an insignificant island but on a continental coast line 
with a variety of soils and climates, and where subsequent experiment 
by civilized men has shown that the cocoanut will thrive abundantly. 
Rutland® has already pointed out that the distribution of the cocoanut 
in the southern seas ‘texactly coincides with the extension of the art 
of agriculture,” and he adds the pertinent though not entirely accurate 
observation: 
If the cocoanut palm was transported from Polynesia to America as a culti- 
vated plant, it would probably be found in cultivation on that continent instead of in 
a wild state, the ancient inhabitants having made little use of the fruit. Throughout 
Polynesia the cocoanut was of the utmost importance, as many of the islands would 
have been uninhabitable without it. If its presence on these islands was due to 
cultivation, we have in it another important evidence of the colonization of the 
region. 
HUMAN ASSISTANCE NECESSARY. 
After his extended voyage among the Pacific islands Pickering? 
published the following opinions combining the results of his own 
inquiries and the consensus of opinion of resident Europeans: 
With the above exceptions, the useful plants appear to be of foreign origin, The 
cocoa palm is the principal one, and so invariably is its presence attributable to 
human operations that it has become a guide to the traders in seeking for natives. 
Notwithstanding that the fruit is well adapted for floating uninjured over a wide 
expanse, [ have never met with an instance of the cocoa palm having spontaneously 
extended itself from island to island. Two distinct varieties are recognized at the 
Fiji Islands. 
C. nucifera throughout the Pacific occurs only on those islands to which it has been 
carried by the natives, a fact well known to traders; was observed by myself only 
under cultivation throughout the islands of the Pacific and the Malayan archipelago. 
‘Memoir IIT, Australian Museum, Sydney, p. 22 (1896). 
* Trans. New Zealand Institute, vol. 29, p. 13 (1896). 
“Races of Men (London, 1863), and Chronological History of Plants (Boston, 
1879). 
