12 Transactions. — Miscellaneotis. 



Coast, or some portion of Africa in the direction of Zanzibar, 

 the inhabitants being represented of dwarfish stature ; but it 

 is questionable whether cocoanuts were growing in Africa at 

 that distant period, or more than three thousand years ago. 

 It w^as not until after Vasco da Gama had discovered the Cape 

 of Good Hope that the cocoanut was introduced on the west 

 coast of x\frica by the Portuguese. Its introduction into 

 Ceylon has been since the commencement of the Christian 

 era, and until very lately the cultivation of the tree in India 

 was restricted to the Brahmins, thus showing that there also 

 it was a comparatively recent addition to the cultivated 

 plants. 



That the cocoanut-palm has long been cultivated in Mada- 

 gascar is evident from the number of places to which it has 

 given a name. Thus we have the Village Amhouniko, which 

 means " at the cocoanut "; the Eiver Amboclivo2iniko , " at the 

 foot of the cocoanut." In the Malagasy name of the cocoa- 

 palm, niko is so similar to the Polynesian name niau, and to 

 nikau, the native name of the only palm {Areca sapida) be- 

 longing to the New Zealand x\rchipelago, as to suggest that the 

 cocoanut was introduced from the Pacific into the great 

 African island. When Polynesian navigation comes under con- 

 sideration we shall find this suggestion curiously strengthened. 



In the Malay Archipelago and Polynesia the cocoanut is 

 most abundantly cultivated, the varieties grown being almost 

 innumerable. As w^e proceed eastward from the Malay 

 Islands these varieties diminish in number until we reach the 

 west coast of South America, where a single wild species 

 occurs. Though the tree was unknown in the West Indies, or 

 along the east coast of the continent, when Columbus made 

 his discovery, it is quite certain it was growing wild on the 

 western side of the narrow isthmus ; hence the question has 

 arisen. Where was the original habitat of the species — in the 

 Old World or in the New ? The botanical evidence is entirely 

 in favour of the New World, all the other species of the 

 genus Cocos being confined to America. The historical evi- 

 dence, on the other hand, points to the Malay Islands. The 

 species being littoral and the fruit Avell adapted for floating on 

 water, it has been suggested that it may have found its way 

 accidentally from Polynesia to the x\merican coast within 

 comparatively recent tmies. Pickering, who visited a great 

 many of the small uninhabited Polynesian islands, states that 

 he did not meet with a single instance of the spontaneous 

 extension of the species.* These observations have been 

 confirmed by Woodford in a recently-published work on the 

 Solomon Islands, wherein he says, " From repeated observa- 



* " Races of Man." Charles Pickering. 



