INLAND LOCALITIES FOR THE COCOA PALM. 285 



and the volcanic soil furnished the alkalinity which the species appa- 

 rently finds congenial on the seashore, and which it is unable to obtain 

 in inland localities having a heavy rainfall. The cocoanut resembles 

 the date in this preference for alkaline soils, but differs in being much 

 more sensitive to extremes of temperature. 



The limited distribution of the great majority of the species of 

 palms has already been remarked, so that there is nothing exceptional 

 in the supposition that the cocoanut may have remained confined to a 

 very small area until it made its way to the coast and was exploited by 

 man as one of the few useful strand species. 



And notwithstanding the general opinion to the contrary, the cocoa- 

 nut is not an exclusively littoral or sea level species. It flourishes, for 

 example, at Bangalore, in the middle of the southern part of the Hin- 

 dostan Peninsula, nearly 200 miles from the coast, and at an elevation 

 of nearly 3,000 feet. In the region of the Ganges and Brahmaputra 

 it has been carried inland 150 or 200 miles, and even to Patna and 

 Lucknow, though at the latter place the nuts are said not to ripen. 

 Pickering's ""Races of Men" furnishes a statement that in semiarid 

 Arabia the cocoanut is cultivated tw in the interior country back of 

 Muscat." According to Dr. Edward Palmer thousands of cocoanut 

 palms are grown in the dry and somewhat elevated region about the 

 city of Colima, Mexico, and it has also been reported at Merida, Yuca- 

 tan. In none of these places, however, is there any indication that the 

 tree is indigenous, and according to Seeman numerous unsuccessful 

 attempts have been made to grow it in the central parts of the Isthmus 

 of Panama. But it is in South America, the home of all the other 

 species of Cocos, that we find the greatest probability of an indigenous 

 inland existence of the cocoa palm. Cieza de Leon described in the 

 first half of the sixteenth century palms from this region which may 

 have been cocoanuts: 



The site is 23 leagues from the city of Cartago, 12 from the town of Anzerma, and 

 1 from the great river, on a plain between two small rivers, and is surrounded by 

 great palm trees, which are different from those I have already described, though 

 more useful, for very savoury palmitos are taken from them, and their fruit is also 

 savoury, for when it is broken with stones milk flows out, and they even make a 

 kind of cream and butter from it, which they use for lighting lamps. 



Probably because of the general belief in the strictly littoral distri- 

 bution of the cocoanut Markham has conjectured that this statement 

 refers to Oeroxylon andicola, a palm which Humboldt reported from 

 the region of Cartago, but which grows on high declivities, not in the 

 river plains. Moreover, it is the waxy secretion of the trunk of 

 Ceroxjdon which is burned, not a cream or butter made from a milk- 

 producing fruit. The apparently unnecessary statement that "their 

 fruit is also savoury" doubtless implies a reference to the pixiuare 



