225 



possession of woolly seeds easily transported by the wind are 

 facts that may be perhaps fairly adduced to account for the 

 presence of very large trees at the present day in forests far from 

 human habitations. Most writers, however, consider that Ceiba 

 pentandra is a native of America, and the evidence that can be 

 assembled in support of this view seems fairly conclusive. One 

 fact of some significance is that of the nine species of the genus 

 Ceiba recognized by K. Schumann in Engler & Prantl's Die 

 Natiirlichen Pflanzenfamilien, the remaining eight are attributed 

 exclusively to the warmer parts of America. 



Pickering in his " Chronological History of Plants " (p. 783) 

 states that Eriodendron anfracUiosnm " was carried westward 

 across the Pacific to the Philippines " by the European colonists, 

 and also to the neighboring islands, to Burma, to Hindi' 'tan, to 

 equatorial East Africa, etc., though "according to Auld seem- 

 ingly 'wild in Kandesh.' " Many of the older possible references 

 to this tree in general botanical literature are obscured by con- 

 fusion with the East Indian tree now known as Bombax Ceiba 

 L. (= Bombax malabanciiui DC), to which Linnaeus, overesti- 

 mating the importance of the presence or absence of spines and 

 supposing this Malabar tree to occur in the West as well as in 

 the East Indies, unfortunately transferred the native American 

 name Ceiba. In searching through the writings of the earliest 

 American explorers and botanical travelers, one finds a good 

 number of references to trees which may well have been speci- 

 mens of Ceiba pentandra, though many of these references fall a 

 little short of being diagnostic and conclusive. Probably the 

 earliest and certainly one of the most significant of such allusions 

 is found in the "Select Letters of Christopher Columbus " * and 

 occurs in a letter written by Dr. Chanca, physician to the fleet of 

 Columbus on his second voyage to the West Indies, and relat- 

 ing to the island of Espanola (Santo Domingo). Dr. Chanca 

 wrote : 



" We have met with trees bearing wool, of a sufficiently fine quality 

 (according to the opinion of those who are acquainted with the art) 



*66. 1870 [2d Ed.]. Translated and edited by R. H. Major. London 

 (Hakluyt Soc.) 



