3884 CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE NATIONAL HERBARIUM. 
soil. Under favorable conditions upon the seabeach the coconut 
palm may require only one form of assistance from man-—protection 
against the shade of other vegetation—but in other places it may 
become dependent upon man for its water supply and for the saline 
constituents of the soil. 
ABSENCE OF COCONUT PALMS ON THE COAST OF PERU. 
The failure of archeologists to find coconut shells in the ancient 
graves of Peru was used by De Candolle as an argument against the 
American origin of the palm, but coconuts still refuse to grow along 
the Peruvian coast, in spite of efforts to introduce them. Other 
palms flourish in the botanical ¢ 
experiments have shown that the coconut is entirely unsuited to the 
local conditions. Although much of the coast belt of Peru lies inside 
the Tropics, the sky is overeast and the weather continuously cool for 
several months of the year, a result of the cold Ifumboldt current 
that follows the Peruvian coast. The unfavorable climate continues 
northward nearly to Guayaquil, where the cloud belt is passed and 
the coco palm thrives.4 
The English botanist Spruce, who made a special study of the 
vegetation of this region, considers that the Peruvian desert extends 
along the coast even farther north than Guayaquil, almost to the 
equator, lis first mention of coconuts growing on the coast being at 
1° 5’ south latitude. 
ardens at Lima, but numerous 
The northern limit of the Peruvian desert is usually placed about Tumbez, at the 
southern extremity of the Gulf of Guayaquil, in latitude 3° 3078., but IT now know, 
from personal inspection, that the coast of the Pacific north of the gulf has the same 
geological conformation, the same climate, and almost as scanty a vegetation as it has 
south of it. At what point to northward the struggle between barrenness and fertility 
begins to be equally balanced Iam unable to say, but Iam inclined to place 1t about 
Cape Pasado, at the mouth of the river Chones. Guayaquil itself, as seen from the 
river, with its groves of coco palms and fruit trees, and its picturesque wooded hills, 
might be supposed a region of forests; but the moment we pass the skirts of the city to 
westward we find that the country is nearly all savanna, either open and grassy or 
scattered over with bushes and low groves, and that the woods are confined to the hills 
and to the borders of salt-creeks.. 
About Cape San Lorenzo (latitude [° 578.) the coast is beld and broken, and almost 
completely clad with low bushy vegetation. In the village of the same name, which 
nestles in the bay to southward of the cape, at the mouth of a small stream, the houses 
stand mixed with Coco palms and Plantains, and steep wooded declivities rise at the 
back. 2. . 
A little farther northward, on the river Chones, there is real forest, from which much 
timber is obtained for Guayaquil.? 
a For the facts stated in this paragraph I am indebted to Mr. W. Ii. Safford, of the 
Bureau of Plant Industry, U.S. Department of Agriculture. 
bSpruce, Richard, Notes of a Botanist on the Amazon and Andes, edited by A. R, 
Wallace, vol, 2, pp. 828, 829. (London, 1908.) 
