340 CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE NATIONAL HERBARIUM. 
De Candolle’s inference from Acosta’s report of coconuts in Porto 
Rico at the end of the sixteenth century, that they had recently 
been introduced by the Spaniards, proves to have no warrant in 
history and is directly opposed by the more extended reference to 
the coconut in Porto Rico by the Duke of Cumberland’s chaplain, 
who visited the island only a few years after Acosta. 
De Candolle’s use of the testimony of Piso and Maregrave to sup- 
port the idea of the introduction of the coconut into Brazil by 
Europeans is also unwarranted, since those writers only indicated 
that the plant was cultivated. An earlier and more explicit record, 
unknown to De Candolle, gives an account of the coconut as one of 
the native products of Brazil. 
The journal of Cieza de Leon, who accompanied the first Spanish 
expedition to the interior of Colombia, indicates the presence of the 
coconut palm in localities where it still continues to exist, as shown 
by the accounts of Velasco, Humboldt, and more recent travelers, 
down. to the present decade. 
ETHNOLOGICAL CONCLUSIONS. 
The American origin of the coconut palm and the strict limita- 
tion of its status in maritime tropics to that of a cultivated plant 
are facts of ethnological significance. The wide distribution of the 
coconut in prehistoric times is evidence of the antiquity of agri- 
culture in America and of very early communication across the 
Pacific. 
The American origin of the coconut palm, along with its inability 
to maintain itself on tropical seacoasts without human assistance, 
compels us to believe that its trans-Pacifie distribution was the work 
of primitive man. The dependency of the Pacific islanders upon the 
coconut may be taken to show that these islands could not have 
been occupied without the previous domestication and dissemina- 
tion of the coconut. 
In view of the fact that several other palms of unquestioned 
American origin have been domesticated by aborigines of the Ameri- 
can tropics, no ethnological objection can be raised to the idea that 
the coconut palm was originally domesticated in ancient America. 
The name ‘‘eoco”’ does not appear to have been applied to the 
‘Indian nut” till after the discovery of America and is to be con- 
sidered as a word derived from the natives of the West Indies. 
Other native names for the coconut are found among primitive tribes 
of Costa Rica, as well as in Brazil. 
The presence of large numbers of coconuts on Cocos Island in the 
time of Wafer (1685) and their subsequent disappearance should be 
considered as evidence that the island was formerly inhabited, or 
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