REPOETS OF WILD COCOA PALMS. 281 



Recent testimony is no less definite and emphatic: 



It is to be emphasized that all cocoanuts are planted; the idea of a wild palm being 

 as strange in Funafuti as that of a wild peach might be in England. Gill, in describ- 

 ing the primeval forest of the uninhabited island of Nassau in 1862,*alludes to but 

 one cocoanut tree among the indigenous vegetation. I doubt whether, despite 

 popular opinion to the contrary, a wild cocoanut palm is to be found throughout the 

 breadth of the Pacific. Certainly it is most rare, again contrary to popular theory, 

 for a drifted cocoanut thrown upon the beach by winds and waves to produce a tree. 

 So intimately is this palm now associated with native life that it is difficult to imag- 

 ine an atoll before its introduction. 1 



That the Polynesians were not accustomed to expect cocoanuts on 

 uninhabited islands is further indicated by the existence of a myth 2 

 in which the progenitor of the inhabitants of Humphrey Island, to 

 the northward of the Society Group, is said to have introduced the 

 cocoa palm by planting a nut picked up at sea. The Marquesas island- 

 ers believed that the cocoanut was introduced from the eastward by 

 one of their gods. 3 



To these testimonies may be added the statements of Woodford,* 

 who made a careful investigation of the conditions existing in the 

 Solomon Group. 



Many of them have small patches of cocoanut trees, a sure sign of frequent native 

 attention, as, from repeated observations, I am convinced that cocoanut palms will 

 rarely grow, and certainly will not bear, fruit, unless attended to and kept clear of 

 overgrowing trees. 



Cocoanuts are an infallible sign of present or recent habitation. When cocoanuts 

 are left to themselves the young trees become speedily choked by the bush that 

 grows up round them and can consequently bear no fruit, so that, as the old trees 

 die, there are no young ones to replace them. 



In his general discussion De Candolle appears to have given consid- 

 erable weight to the fact that several botanists have reported the 

 cocoanut as growing wild in the East Indies, while only Seeman claims 

 to have seen it in that state in America. But such reports of the 

 finding of cultivated species in the wild state can easily be taken too 

 seriously. There are all gradations between plants which exist only 

 in cultivation and those which are able to escape and establish them- 

 selves with the smallest opportunity. In the Tropics the distinction 

 between wild and cultivated often quite fades out, and especially with 

 trees, since these are generally so much more permanent than the 

 traces of human habitation, while at the same time the botanical col- 

 lector usually has little time and less skill for finding the latter. 

 Throughout the moist Tropics it is possible, for instance, to find wild 

 bananas — that is, bananas growing without human assistance. And 



1 Hedley, Memoir III, Australian Museum, Sydney, p. 22 (1896). 



2 Gill, Myth and Songs from the South Pacific, 72 to 74, quoted by Guppy, Journ. 

 Trans. Victoria Inst, vol. 23, p. 46 (1889-90). 



3 Porter's Cruise in the Pacific Ocean, vol. 2, p. 54 (Philadelphia, 1850). 



4 "A Naturalist among the Head-Hunters," pp. 194, 210 (London, 1890). 



