S6 



for other purposes, by the aboriginal Americans, before tlie arrival 

 in this heniispliere of CoJunil)iiK and his companions. 



Jn this connection, there is a striking contrast between the Ameri- 

 can Indians and the primitive Polynesians. The chief economic plants 

 encountered by early explorers on the islands of the Pacific Ocean 

 were identical witii well known Asiatic species. Coconuts, bread- 

 fruit, taro, sugar cane, yams and bananas, the most important food 

 staples of the Polynesians, had been known to the Old World for 

 centuries before the Pacific Islands were visited by Europeans; the 

 shru'b, from the bark of which the Polynesians made their tapa cloth, 

 was identical with the paper mulberry of China and Japan; and' the 

 principal screwpine, or Pandanus, from which the Polynesians made 

 their mats, was a well-known species of southern Asia. A number of 

 these plants had even carried their Asiatic names with them to Poly- 

 nesiia. The Polynesiian language itself, with its varied dialects, 

 spoken in Hawaii, Samoa, New Zealand, Easter Island and on other 

 island groups, can be traced without difficulty to the Malay Archi- 

 pelago, the cradle of the Polynesian race. 



In America!; on the other hand, every cultivated plant encountered 

 by Columbus and his companions was new. Not a single Old World 

 food crop had found its way to our hemisphere before the Discovery; 

 not a grain of wheat, rye, oats, or barley; no peas, cabbage, beets, 

 turnips, watermelon, musk-melon, egg-plant, or other Old' Woirld 

 vegetable; no apple, quince, pear, peach, plum, orange, lemon, mango, 

 or other Old AVorld fruit, had reached America. Even the cotton 

 which was encountered in the AA'est Indies by Columbus the very 

 morning after the Discovery, proved to be a distinct species and could 

 not be made to hybridize with Old World cottons. Conversely, no 

 American cultivated plants ; no maize, no beans, tomatoes, potatoes, 

 sweet potatoes; no cacao (from which chocolate is made); no pine- 

 apples, avocadoes, custard apples nor guavas; no Brazil nuts, pecans, 

 or hickory nuts ; nor any other American food staple had found their 

 waj' to the Old World; even the beeches, chestnuts, oaks, and 

 maples were distinct; and the same is true of the New World ground 

 nuts and the grapes, which were the parent species of our delicious 

 American varieties. Quite unlike anything in the Old World were 

 such cultivated plants as the Cactaceae, the capsicum peppers, and the 

 manioc from which cassava is made. 



In Polynesia the evidence thus offered by cultivated plants points 



