COOK—THE COCONUT PALM IN AMERICA. 301 
at the end of a few generations, even though the coconuts arrived 
first and succeeded in establishing themselves.@ 
Many cultivated plants and weeds have escaped from gardens and 
adopted an independent existence in parts of the world very remote 
from their original home. The finding of such a species in a wild 
state proves that the conditions are favorable to its growth, even 
though it gives us no evidence regarding the original home of the 
species. When a plant with the prolonged, world-wide opportunities 
of the coconut fails anywhere to escape and become established, but 
remains completely dependent upon man, 1t seems obvious that the 
tropical coasts where man has planted it do not afford the ideal 
conditions for its existence, the conditions under which it would be 
likely to develop as a wild plant. 
Other kinds of palms afford excellent examples of intolerance of 
shade, showing that this character is shared in different degrees by 
many members of the group. An extreme case is found in Central 
American fan palms of the genus Brahea, that usually grow on preci- 
pices of limestone rock. In forested districts these fan palms are 
confined to the perpendicular walls, the only situations that afford 
them the necessary exposure to sunlight. Most of the seeds of these 
palms must fall into the forests below, but young palms are found 
only in the crevices of the cliffs. It does not appear that even small 
seedlings are developed without more light than the forest conditions 
afford. If natural selection could have rendered the species more 
aDr. H. B. Guppy has held (Journ. Trans. Victoria Inst., vol. 24, p. 267. 1890) 
that the coco palm was native in the Cocos or Keeling Island of the Indian Ocean, to 
the southwest of Sumatra, but his account is far from convincing. He admits that the 
island had been visited by Malays before the advent of European settlers, and also that 
the crabs never permit the young palm seedlings to become established unless the 
nuts are well buried by the planters. 
Schimper found in his extensive studies of Malayan strand floras no instance of 
successful self-grown coconuts. (Schimper, A. F. W., Die indo-malayische Strand- 
flora, 162. 1891.) Mr. W. E. Safford reports that coconuts, along with seeds of many 
other plants, are frequently drifted to the sandy windward beaches of the island of 
Guam, but that no palms grow on this uninhabited coast, 
A recent work entitled ‘‘The New Flora of the Volcanic Island of Krakatau,’’ by 
Prof. A. Ernst, contains a photograph of a group of nearly a dozen coconut palms, 
standing well back from the strand, all of nearly the same size and at nearly equal 
distances. Reports of the early visits to the island did not show the presence of coco- 
nut palms, though many other plants had established themselves. An explanation 
of the presence of the palms away from the strand is probably to be found in the 
changes that have continued to take place in the topography of the new island, as indi- 
cated in the following statement: 
... “Tt is obvious that the oldest strand-plants, which sprang from the seeds and 
fruits from the drift formed in the first year, have been gradually separated from the 
beach by a constantly increasing belt and that during this shifting of the shore-line 
new plant-germs were introduced with the pumice and took part in the formation 
of the present discontinuous strand-forest”’ (p. 69). 
