Cultivated Elementary Species 89 



by Columbus, according to accounts of Oviedo 

 and other contemporary Spanish writers. 



Concluding we may state that according to 

 the whole evidence as it has been discussed by 

 De CandoUe and especially by Cook, the coco- 

 nut-palm is of American origin and hasbeendis- 

 tributed as a cultivated tree by man through the 

 whole of its wide range. This must have hap- 

 pened in a prehistoric era, thus affording time 

 enough for the subsequent development of the 

 fifty and more known varieties. But the pos- 

 sibility that at least some of them have origin- 

 ated before culture and have been deliberately 

 chosen by man for distribution, of course re- 

 mains unsettled. 



Coconuts are not very well adapted for 

 natural dispersal on land, and this would rather 

 induce us to suppose an origin within the period 

 of cultivation for the whole group. There are 

 a large number of cultivated varieties of differ- 

 ent species which by some peculiarity do not 

 seem adapted for the conditions of life in- the 

 wild state. These last have often been used to 

 prove the origin of varietal forms during cul- 

 ture. One of the oldest instances is the variety 

 or rather subspecies of the opium-poppy, which 

 lacks the ability to burst open its capsules. The 

 seeds, which are thrown out by the wind, in the 

 common forms, through the apertures under- 



