40 



Though, generally speaking, it is difficult or impossible to make 

 out whether a coco-nut, carried by the sea to the shore of an island, 

 originates from this same island or from another one, I admit the 

 possibility that on Krakatao, from time to time, living coco-nuts 

 coming from other islands may be washed ashore. But, by this, the 

 species has by no means established itself in the locality reached. 

 If circumstances are most favourable the fruit germinates immediately 

 behind the floodmark where the seedling is exposed to numerous 

 dangers, except on rapidly increasing beaches. Here and there on 

 Krakatao and the neighbouring islands many specimens, even groves, 

 of this palm have been found but it is sure that many, if not all, of 

 these were planted by man. It is a well-known fact, also memorated 

 by Docters van 1, ecu wen '), that when fishermen for some 

 purpose go ashore on the uninhabited islands of the Java-sea and 

 find a young seedling of a coco-palm on the beach, they remove 

 it from its unsafe habitat and plant it in the interior. They do so, of 

 course, with a view to the future fruits, which may supply them with 

 drink or food or form an article of commerce. For this same pur- 

 pose germinating coco-nuts are sometimes introduced from elsewhere. 

 That coco-palms had been planted on an uninhabited island 1 have 

 observed myself in 1921 on the coral-island Klein Kombuis (afterwards 

 declared a Nature monument) where, in the midst of the dense forest 

 covering the entire island, plots had been cleared for this purpose. 

 Something like this has also happened on Krakatao: not only the 

 grouping of some of the coco-palms there points to human influence, 

 but it has appeared from an investigation instituted some years ago 

 by the Resident of the Lampong Districts (to which Krakatao belongs) 

 that after the eruption one Hadji Djoema/i (of Kalianda) has planted 

 coco-palms on the island ~). Therefore I think it quite possible that 

 all coco-palms occurring on Krakatao are either planted specimens 3 ) 

 or form the offspring of these, growing quite near their parent. 



In the Dutch Indies the fact that fruits of the coco-palm reach, 

 without human assistance, a safe locality to germinate in is of so 

 extremely rare occurrence, that spontaneous migration from one 

 island to another, or even from one point of the shore to another 



1 ) Ann. ]ard. Bot. Buitenzorg XXXII (1923), 142. 



2) Tectona XVIII (1925;, p. 2>2. 



") In 1900 Ernst and his companions found a group of coco-palms more than nOm- 

 from the shore and ahove flood-mark D o c t e r s van Leeuwen (Ann. |ard. Bot. 

 Buitenrorg XXXIII (1923) 142] found on Verlaten Eiland several coco-palms far from 

 the sea, without ,,the possibility of explaining this by the supposition that the coast- 

 line had shifted". 



