270 = as By GUPPY, (M.B, 
occupation. North Keeling Island, where the original vege. 
tation has been less interfered with by the cultivation of th. 
cocoa-nut palm, affords proof of this; and I have furthe. 
corroborative testimony in the recollections of Mr, Ross, wh 
was also familiar with the accounts given by his father an. 
grandiather of the condition of the vegetation before the 
islands were occupied. In those early days the thick belt of 
cocoa-nut palms that covered the strand concealed or dis- 
guised, to great extent, the character of the interior vegeta- 
tion of the larger islands, and thus the early navigators, whe 
sailed by these islands and but rarely landed on them, formed 
a somewhat exaggerated estimate of the prevalence of the 
cocoa-nut palm. : 
There are various opinions as to whether the cocoa-nut is 
te - 
able to establish itself on a coral island. Professor Dana 
doubts it, and he says: “There is no known evidence that 
any island never inhabited has been found supplied with 
cocoa-nut trees” (Corals and Coral Islands, 1872, p. 281) 
‘This is too sweeping a statement; but all the evidence goes 
to show that the chances against a drifted cocoa-nut finding 
a home on a coral island are very numerous. Foreign cocoa: 
nuts are frequently drifted to the Keeling Islands, where they 
sometimes germinate; but, as Mr. Ross informs me, th: 
sprouting nut is always destroyed by the crabs. It woulc. 
however, be unreasonable to suppose that fortune does no’ 
sometimes assist this ocean waif. Supposing, even, that only 
50) foreign cocoa-nuts are stranded on the Keeling Islands 
in the course of a year, and that but one of thege is able to 
develop into a tree in the course of a century, the student of 
nature would not regard 5000 to 1 as inacceptable odds when — 
the fieid is unlimited, and the time of the competition practi- 
cally unrestricted. Of course it must first be proved that 
cocoa-nuts can germinate sometimes after long immersion in. 
salt-water. After considering the evidence in his work on, 
the botany of the “Challenger” Expedition, Mr. Hemsley 
considers it “doubtful whether oceanic currents have played 
an active part in their diffusion;” yet he thinks thei 
“present wide area is partly due to this agency,” and he 
cites the instance of cocoa-nut palms having been found on 
the Keeling Islands when they were first settled on in the early. 
part of this century. He also quotes Jouan, who holds that, 
too much importance has been attached to the influence of 
oceanic currents in the dispersion of the cocoa-nut, which 
requires to be first buried up, or else attached to the soil 
before it can expect to survive. I shall show in a later part 
} 
