WAS THE COCOA-NUT KNOWN TO THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS? 101 
uses of the cocoa-nut tree, the American natives have made no such 
progress, and consume the fruit as an occasional luxury only. This 
would seem to imply that the acquaintance of the latter with the tree 
dates from a comparatively recent period, whilst that of the former 
from a more remote one, and that America can scarcely be regarded as 
its native country. 
“On turning to Polynesia we find whole islands covered with cocoa- 
nut, and in some groups the entire population relying upon it as their 
staff of life. It has all the appearance of being perfectly at home, but 
there is one circumstance that strikes us as very curious. The Poly- 
nesians are supposed to be of a Malay stock, and to have migrated 
somewhere from Eastern Asia. How comes it that they are ignorant 
of the art of preparing toddy from the unexpanded flower-branches of 
the cocoa-nut palm,—a beverage of so ancient a date that the oldest 
language of Asia has a term for it, toddy being a corruption of the 
Sanskrit word fade? Did the Polynesians leave the cradle of their 
race before the cocoa-nut had found its way toit? or are we to assume 
that the Polynesians have migrated with the trade-wind rather than 
against it; that Malayan Asia was peopled rather from Polynesia than 
Polynesia from Malayan Asia? Toddy may be extracted from other 
palms besides the cocoa-nut, and has been obtained from several indi- 
genous Asiatic palms (Caryota, Arenga, etc.) from time immemorial. 
Had the Polynesians therefore once known the process, they would 
probably never have forgotten so easy a way of obtaining sugar, viue- 
gar, yeast, and a pleasant drink, the strength of which may be regu- 
lated by time to any man’s taste. So either the Polynesians could 
never have come from Eastern Asia, or else, after spreading over the 
South Sea, ages must have elapsed before the cocoa-nut made its 
appearance in those waters, so that the process of toddy-making (there 
being no other suitable Polynesian palins to operate upon) had been 
entirely forgotten, and even disappeared from native traditions. Un- 
der such circumstances, it behoves us to suspend our final judgment 
miliar with the Cocos nucifera, and I have not been able to learn any- 
thing regarding its history on the eastern coast of that continent, 
except that in Madagascar, in common with many other things supposed 
to have been imported by Malay pirates, it bears a Malayan name. 
