POLYNESIAN MIGRATIONS. 2S 
THE DIRECTION OF THE TRANSPACIFIC DISTRIBUTION. 
In addition to the testimony already noticed as indicating a rather 
recent arrival of the cocoa palm in the Indian Ocean, the probabilities 
of a westward rather than an eastward distribution of the species are 
strongly suggested by an argument brought forward by Seeman! as 
favoring a Polynesian rather than an Asiatic origin. The Polyne- 
sians, like other aborigines of the tropics, are fond of fermented 
drinks, but they are quite unacquainted with the use of the sap of the 
cocoanut or of other palms for this purpose, and, like the aborigines of 
the American tropics,’ they have recourse to infusions of roots in 
which fermentation has been induced by preliminary mastication in 
the human mouth. In the Malay region and in tropical Asia this cus- 
tom seems not to exist, the juices of several Asiatic palms having fur- 
nished from remote times the basis of fermented drinks and a variety 
of other useful substances. Even the word ** toddy ” has been trac ed 
back to the Sanscrit without change, though scholars prefer to write 
it tade. 
Had the Polynesians, therefore, once known the process, the *y would probably 
never have forgotten so easy a way of obtaining sugar, v inegar, yeast, and a pleasant 
drink, the strength of which may be regulated by time to any man’s taste. So 
either the Polynesians could never have come from Eastern Asia, or else, after 
spreading over the South Sea, ages must have elapsed before the cocoanut made its 
appearance in those waters, so that the process of toddy making (there being no 
other suitable Polynesian palm to operate upon) had been entirely forgotten, and 
even disappeared from native traditions. 
This amounts to the proposition that if the Polynesians originated 
in Asia they left that continent before the invention of toddy, and 
before the cocoanut came into use, or at a period so remote as not to 
correspond to the current supposition that the Polynesian oce cupation 
1Flora V itiensis, p. 27H ( London, 1865-75 ). 
*Toa very limited extent use was made in America of the juice of palms. In Cen- 
tral America wine was made from the juice of Acrocomia, That this was an indige- 
nous and not an introduced custom is indicated by the faet that Acrocomia is a 
strictly American genus, and that, although it extends from Mexico and Cuba to 
Brazil and Paraguay, the drinking of its juice seems to have been localized in Cen- 
tral America in regions where one of the species, 1. vinifera, is said to be extremely 
abundant. That the custom was truly aboriginal land not brought from the Philip- 
pines by Spanish agency is also proved by the fact that it was observed by Columbus 
on his fourth voyage. Moreover, the palm was not tapped in the Asiatic manner, 
but the juice was squeezed from its pith, necessitating the destruction of the tree. 
In Colombia, Humboldt describes the natives as sec uring wine from Cocos butyra- 
cea by felling the trees and excavating a cavity in the upper part of the trunk, in 
which the juice continued to exude for eighteen or twenty days. 
The art of collecting tuba, as now practiced in Mexico, is believed to have been 
introduced from the Philippines at a comparatively recent period. ° 
