330 CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE NATIONAL HERBARIUM. 
may well assist 1 increasing the power to attract and hold water for 
the young plant. 
The more we appreciate the highly specialized adaptive character- 
istics of the coconut the more unwarranted appears the idea of 
maritime distribution. The huge size of the nuts and the necessary 
limitation of their number, would have no meaning from the stand- 
point of maritime distribution, the maximum production of flour- 
ishing trees under favorable conditions being reckoned at only 200 
nuts. Related palms comparable in size to the coconut, such as 
Attalea and Acrocomia, produce seeds in vastly greater numbers. 
The number of pistillate flowers is relatively very small in the coconut 
palm and many of these are abortive (pls. 62, 63, 64). It would be 
impossible for any large number to develop. The chances of any 
sea-borne nut floating to a favorable destination are so infinitesimal 
that the natural perpetuation of the species by this method would 
be entirely impracticable. The specialization of the coconut toward 
greater size is in itself an evidence that natural selection has favored 
this tendency. Tf afew large seeds had not been more advantageous 
to the palms than many small seeds we may be sure that the large 
seeds would never have developed. How important the factor of 
human selection may have been we do not know, but it does not 
appear that larger size has been a desideratum. The largest varie- 
ties do not seem to bespecially preferred in cultivation. 
BEHAVIOR OF THE COCONUT PALM IN INTERIOR LOCALITIES. 
The popular impression that the coconut will grow to normal 
maturity only in the immediate vicinity of the ocean has arisen from 
the fact that this palm, like the date, is a salt-loving plant and in 
continuously humid tropical countries finds no congenial soil except 
near the seashore. Many agricultural treatises and general works 
of reference continue to repeat the traditional theory of direct and 
necessary connection between the coconut and the sea. Even 
Nicholls asserts the limitation to the seacoast. 
The climate, however, must be a maritime one, the palm delighting in the saline 
atmosphere of the seacoast. When the tree is planted inland, in order to make up forthe 
want of a saline atmosphere, itis usual to put salt in the holes before the seedlings are set 
out, and as much as halfa bushel of salt is sometimes used in this way for each tree.a 
But this view is no longer universal, and is very definitely denied 
by a recent writer on coconut culture in British India. 
The old idea that it would not thrive far from the influence of the sea breeze is ex 
ploded, as it grows well all over the low country, where the soil and rainfall are suitable, 
and even in sheltered valleysat an elevation of 2,000 feet, as in the town of Badulla.b 
“Nicholls, Hf. A. A., Tropical Agriculture, p. 167. (London, 1900.) 
Jardine, W., The Cultivation of the Coconut Palm, Tropical Agriculturist, vol, 
24, p. 151, (1905.) 
