274 ORIGIN AND DISTRIBUTION OF THE COCOA PALM. 



the cocoanut. Mam 7 - of the details are fanciful, but Seeman, who gave 

 the matter thorough 'study, was inclined to credit the principal points. 



The littoral parts of Ceylon are now densely covered with this tree, and it looks 

 more at home there than I have ever seen it in any part of the world. Yet both 

 tradition and history affirm that at one time the cocoanut was unknown in Ceylon. 

 Not far from Point de Galle there is carved on a rock the gigantic effigy of a native 

 prince, Kottah Rayah, to whom is ascribed the discovery of the properties of the 

 cocoanut, which before his time were unknown, as was also the tree. Moreover, the 

 oldest chronicle of Ceylon, the "Marawansa," the historical value of which is now 

 fully admitted, is absolutely silent about everything relating to the cocoanut, whilst 

 it never fails to record, with tedious minuteness, every accession of other fruit trees 

 made to the plantations by native princes. Now, is it probable that a fruit like the 

 cocoanut, which is often tossed about the ocean for months without losing its germi- 

 nating power from the effects of salt water — is it probable that if such a fruit had been 

 indigenous to any part of Asia, it should have reached Ceylon only in a compara- 

 tively recent historical period? 1 



From the limited distribution of the cocoanut and other tropical 

 products St. Pierre deduced a confirmation of the formerly accepted 

 brevity of the earth's history, and while we can not make use of the 

 argument for its original purpose, it niay still be recommended to the 

 attention of those who believe in an Asiatic origin and an aquatic 

 distribution. 



I am persuaded, at the same time, that the greatest part of flitting plants must have 

 a principal center, such as a steep'rock, or an island in the midst of the sea, from 

 whence they diffuse themselves over the rest of the world. This leads me to deduce, 

 what I consider an irrefragable argument in support of the recent creation of our 

 globe; it is this, were the globe of very remote antiquity, all the possible combina- 

 tions of the propagation of plants by seed would have been already completed all 

 over the world. Thus, for example, there would not be an uninhabited island and 

 shore of the seas of India, which you would not find planted with cocoa trees, and 

 sown with cocoanuts, which the ocean wafts thither every year, and which it scat- 

 ters alternately on their strands by means of the variety of its monsoons and of its 

 currents. Now, it is unquestionably certain, that the radiations of that tree and its 

 fruit, the principal focusses of which are in the Maldivia Islands, are not hitherto 

 diffused over all the islands of the Indian Ocean .... There are, in like manner, a 

 multitude of other fruits between the Tropics, of which the primordial stocks are in 

 the Molluccas, in the Philippines, in the islands of the South Sea, and which are 

 entirely unknown on the coasts of both continents .... I shall pursue this reflec- 

 tion no farther; but it evidently demonstrates the newness of the world. Were it 

 eternal, and exempted from the care of a Providence, its vegetables would long since 

 have undergone all the possible combinations of the chance which resows them. We 

 should find their different species in every situation where it was possible for them 

 to grow. 



It may be that neither the evidence adduced by Seeman nor the 

 quaint deductions of St. Pierre can be considered to have important 

 bearing upon the question, but their views are of interest because the 

 inferences they suggest are in accord with so many other considera- 

 tions tending to prove an extra- Asiatic origin for the cocoanut. 



' Flora Vitiensis, p. 276. 



