ilQ STUDIES Or NATURE. 



To return to the fubject of vegetable naviga-* 

 tion ; all the combinations and the verfatilities of 

 their fowings, would have been long ago com- 

 pleted in iflands lying between the fame parallels, 

 and in the fame monfoon*, if the World had been 

 eternal. The double cocoa-nuts, the nurferies of 

 which are in the Sechelles Iflands, would have 

 diffufed themfelves, and would have had time to 

 germinate on the Malabar coaft, on which the Sea 

 is from time to time throwing them. The Indians 

 would have planted upon their mores thofe fruits 

 to which they afcribed virtues fo miraculous, 

 while the palm-tree, which bears them, was fo 

 entirely unknown but twelve years ago to the 

 people of this coaft, that they believed them to he. 

 natives of the bottom of the Sea, and thence gave 

 them the appellation of marine cocoa-nuts. There 

 are, in like manner, a multitude of other fruits 

 between the Tropics, of which the primordial 

 flocks ar« in the Moluccas, in the Philippines, in 

 the iflands of the South-Sea, and which are en- 

 tirely unknown on the coafts of both Continents^ 

 and even in the adjacent iflands, which, undoubt- 

 edly, would have become there the objects of cul- 

 tivation to their inhabitants, had the Sea been al- 

 lowed fumcient time to multiply the projection of 

 them on their fliores. 



I mall 



