PLANTS CULTIVATED FOR THEIR SEEDS. 433 



expected arrival of bottles containing papers on different 

 coasts, that chance has much to do with these transports. 

 The arguments in favour of an Asiatic, or contrary to 

 an American origin, are the following : 



1. A current between the third and fifth parallels, 

 north latitude, flows from the islands of the Indian 

 Archipelago to Panama. 1 To the north and south of this 

 are currents which take the opposite direction, but they 

 start from regions too cold for the cocoa-nut, and do not 

 touch Central America, where it is supposed to have been 

 long indigenous. 



2. The inhabitants of the islands of Asia were far 

 bolder navigators than the American Indians. It is very 

 possible that canoes from the Asiatic Islands, containing 

 a provision of cocoa-nuts, were thrown by tempests or 

 false manoeuvres on to the islands or the west coast of 

 America. The converse is highly improbable. 



3. The area for three centuries has been much vaster 

 in Asia than in America, and the difference was yet more 

 considerable before that epoch, for we know that the 

 cocoa-nut has not long existed in the east of tropical 

 America. 



4. The inhabitants of the islands of Asia possess an 

 immense number of varieties of this tree, which points to 

 a very ancient cultivation. Blume, in his Rumphia, 

 enumerates eighteen varieties in Java and the adjacent 

 islands, and thirty-nine in the Philippines. Nothing 

 similar has been observed in America. 



5. The uses of the cocoa-nut are more varied and more 

 habitual in Asia. The natives of America hardly utilize 

 it except for the contents of the nut, from which they do 

 not extract the oil. 



6. The common names, very numerous and original in 

 Asia, as we shall presently see, are rare, and often of 

 European origin in America. 



7. It is not probable that the ancient Mexicans and 

 inhabitants of Central America would have neglected to 

 spread the cocoa-nut in several directions, had it existed 

 among them from a very remote epoch. The trifling 



1 Stieler, ibid., map 9. 



2 F 



