290 CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE NATIONAL HERBARIUM. 
The meat of the ripe nut, for which coconuts are imported into 
temperate countries, is not the part most valued in the tropics, but 
the ‘‘milk” of the unripe nut. On many of the coral islands of the 
Pacific, where there are no springs or other supplies of water, the 
natives could not survive without the milk of the coconut. In Porto 
Rico and elsewhere in America the coconut is also valued chiefly as 
the source of a beverage, but where fresh water is as abundant as in 
the West Indies the milk of the coconut is a luxury rather than a 
necessity. The unripe nuts are carried to the towns and sold as a 
beverage, like lemonade or soda water in temperate regions. 
The meat of the coconut has little more importance inthe American 
tropics than in the United States, being used mostly for pastry and 
confectionary, and not as a staple article of diet. [even the oil of the 
coconut which serves so many culinary and other domestic purposes 
in the East Indies is almost unknown in the American tropics. The 
extraction of the oil and its use in cooking are said to be practiced in 
British Honduras and in Trinidad, but by European residents rather 
than by the natives of the country. There are no such multitudinous 
applications of the shells, husks, fibers, leaves, sap, and all other 
parts of the palm as in the Kast Indies. 
On the west coast of Mexico, according to Dr. Edward Palmer, use 
is made of the so-called ‘‘coconut apple” (manzana de coco), in reality 
the swollen cotyledon of the germinating nut. The cotyledon gradu- 
ally absorbs the food materials stored in the meat of the nut, at the 
same time increasing in size till it fills the whole cavity of the shell. 
The fleshy part of the cotyledon is said to have a pleasant, sweetish 
taste, and to be much more delicate and more readily digestible than 
the meat itself. The coconut ‘‘apples” are also dried and are sold 
in the native markets in this condition. Plate 58, figure 2, shows a 
photograph of two dried cotyledons of the coconut. There is noth- 
ing to show whether the use of the cotyledon represents a native cus- 
tom in Mexico or was imported from the Pacific Islands, where it 
also exists. The making of fermented drink called “tuba” from the 
sap of the palm appears to have been introduced into the vicinity of 
Acapulco from the Philippines, as indicated by the presence of the 
Filipino names. 
An additional reason why the culture of the coconut palm was not 
flourishing in the West Indies at the time of the discovery is found 
in a fact of history. Columbus and other early explorers made 
repeated statements to the effect that the inhabitants of the islands 
were everywhere at war with the Caribs, the seafaring cannibals who 
preyed upon the more peaceable agricultural natives of the islands. 
The fear of the Caribs kept the natives from living near the coasts. 
