99) ORIGIN AND DISTRIBUTION OF THE COCOA PALM. 
was at one time powerful enough to impress its language, social 
organization, and domestic arts upon the black Melanesians, who sub- 
sequently absorbed their conquerors and formed with them the 
remarkable composite peoples found by Europeans in the Pacitie. 
The differentiation of the cocoanut varieties, together with the eth- 
nologic differentiation of the Pacific peoples themselves, give us time 
factors ample for the subsequent Asiatic amalgamation and develop- 
ment of the Malayoid races, which doubtless received creat stimulus 
from the experiences of sucha migrationand may have had a wide influ- 
ence in the organization of the primitive civilizations of Asia, even far 
bevond the boundaries of direct power or physical contact. Traces of 
such influences far within the mainland of Asia have been interpreted 
by anthropolgists as meaning the Asiatic, and even the Caucasic, ori- 
gin of the primitive Polynesians; but all such arguments from phi- 
lology and racial characteristics, after all, only prove the relations, 
and do not declare the nature of the contact or the direction of the 
primitive migrations. Cultivated plants, on the other hand, are deti- 
nitely recognizable, permanent, and unmistakable entities on which 
human civilizations depend, and from which civilized man can not 
detach himself. Even the substitution of food plants is an extremely 
slow and difficult process, often necessitating profound social and 
economic changes, and leaving traces for centuries in language and 
daily life. 
SUMMARY OF DE CANDOLLE’S ARGUMENTS. 
In attempting to displace De Candolle’s time-honored opinion it is 
perhaps desirable to go over in brief detail his formulated arguments. 
These are twelve in number, two in favor of and ten against an Amer- 
ican origin. The first of the favorable considerations has been noticed 
already—the existence of the eleven other American species of Cocos. 
The second is that the trade winds of the equatorial region of the 
Pacific would tend to carry floating objects to the westward. This is 
offset in theory, as it might be in practice, also, by the first of the newa- 
tive arguments, that the currents of the equatorial Pacific would carry 
objects in the opposite direction, or from west to east. The secomd 
objection to an American origin is the fact that ‘tthe inhabitants of 
the islands of Asia were far bolder navigators than the American 
Indians,” rendering it more likely that they would be carried by ‘*tem- 
pests or false maneuvers” to the American coast. The eastern part of 
the equatorial Pacific is, however, notoriously free from storms, and 
the seafaring skill of the islanders, together with the above mentioned 
westerly trade winds, would have tended to protect them from the dis- 
asters suggested. Instead of being dependent upon accident and con- 
jecture we have historical evidence that the Peruvians knew the loca- 
