Cultivated Elementary Species 87 



human habitation. Shipwrecks might furnish 

 a successful method of launching viable coco- 

 nuts, and such have no doubt sometimes con- 

 tributed to their distribution. But this as- 

 sumption implies a dissemination of the nuts by 

 man, and if this principal fact is granted, it is 

 far more natural to believe in a conscious in- 

 telligent dissemination. 



The coconut is a cultivated tree. It may be 

 met with in some spots distant from human 

 dwellings, but whenever such cases have been 

 subjected to a closer scrutiny, it appears that 

 evidently or at least probably huts had formerly 

 existed in their neighborhood, but having been 

 destroyed by some accident, had left the palm 

 trees uninjured. Even in South America, 

 where it may be found in forests at great dis- 

 tances from the sea shore, it is not at all certain 

 that true native localities occur, and it seems to 

 be quite lost in its natural condition. 



Granting the cultivated state of the palms as 

 the only really important one, and considering 

 the impossibility or at least great improbability 

 of its dissemination by natural means, the dis- 

 tribution by man himself, according to his 

 wants, assumes the rank of an hypothesis fully 

 adequate to the explanation of all the facts con- 

 cerning the life history of the tree. 



We now have to inquire into the main ques- 



