318 CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE NATIONAL HERBARIUM. 
clears only when we are prepared to admit that the original colonists 
in the Pacific islands were native of the same continent as the coconut 
palm, so that they could take with them the cultivated plants on 
which their future existence depended. By keeping close to the 
practical agricultural facts we avoid the confusion to which De 
Candolle and Seemann were brought by conflicting theoretical 
methods of ascertaining the origins of plants. The uses of the coco- 
nut have been most highly developed in the Pacific islands because 
lack of other plants has compelled the inhabitants to depend more 
and more upon the coconut. Necessity has given rise to the multi- 
plicity of uses, but the palm itself had to be brought from the only 
part of the world where such palms grew—South America. 
The relatively sight economic importance of the coconut in America 
could be given as a reason for believing that the palm was not intro- 
duced into America by the Polynesians in the same way that Seemann 
used the absence of toddy in Polynesia to prove that the palm was 
not brought to the Pacific islands by people from Asia. 
It is gratuitous to object to human agency as accounting for the 
spread of the coconut since there were other cultivated tropical plants, 
such as the sweet potato and the banana which were also cultivated 
on both sides of the Pacific, and must have been carried across by 
the men who knew and used them. They are propagated only from 
cuttings, would not survive soaking in salt water, and do not grow 
on sea beaches. The indications are that nearly all the cultivated 
plants which Polynesia shared with America were natives of America, 
but whatever their source, they do not permit us to doubt that there 
was communication across the Pacifie by primitive agricultural 
people. Ethnological evidence for such communication may also be 
found in the similarities now commonly recognized between the 
natives of America and the present inhabitants of eastern Asia and 
the Malay region. That the straight-haired peoples of the Hast 
Indies are not true aborigines of the countries they now occupy is 
shown by the presence among them of remnants of the former curl- 
haired populations, such as the Ainus in Japan, the Negritos in the 
Philippines, the Alfuros of Gilolo and Ceram, the Papuans, and the 
Andamanese. On the continent of Asia as well recent investiga- 
tions are showing that primitive peoples related to the Negritos or to 
the Ainus preceded the Malayan and Mongolian occupations. 
That the present Polynesians do not more closely resemble the 
natives of America does not warrant an objection to the idea that 
the coconut palm was originally carried into the Pacifie islands from 
America. Ethnologists are familiar with the fact that the prevail- 
ing direction of recent racial movements in the Pacifie has been from 
west to east. Whatever may have been the conditions in the remote 
times when the islands were first occupied, the island people have 
