ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE OF THE COCOANUT. 27 1 



be confident regarding the affinities of a type so different from its con- 

 geners as is the cocoanut. 1 But with no oriental relative- in even 

 generic range there is no rational basis for doubt that the species 

 belongs to an American series. 



Under an evolutionary conception of nature we must believe that 

 economic species like all others originated in definite areas, and that 

 they have been domesticated at definite periods and distributed by 

 natural means. There may, of course, have been independent discov- 

 eries of the usefulness of well-developed and already desirable fruits, 

 and many such fruits have remained in the Tropics comparatively little 

 affected by cultural selection. Of this, the several species of Anona 

 furnish good examples. The sour-sop, the sweet-sop, and the custard 

 apple are American fruits which probably reached in their wild state 

 something near their present degree of excellence. Although now 

 widely distributed throughout the Tropics, they are usually planted 

 in a rather desultoiy manner and do not receive the same amount 

 or kind of attention bestowed upon staple food plants or commercial 

 products. As already remarked, the cocoanut as a fruit is of primary 

 importance only in the coral islands of the Pacific, where the number 

 of economic plants is limited, and where even fresh water is some- 

 times wanting, and only the milk of the cocoanut makes human life 

 possible. In America the relative value of the cocoanut places it in 

 the list with such natural products as the Anonas, with which it agrees 

 in offering little differentiation of varieties. 



PREHISTORIC INTRODUCTION OF OTHER PLANTS. 



A wild product of secondaiy value may not receive careful attention 

 until quite late in the history of an agricultural people; but, on the 

 other hand, it is impossible to agree with Dr. Watt 2 that such staple 

 food plants as the yams were "cultivated at a much later date than 

 most other vegetables, probably on account of the fact that without 

 the trouble of cultivation they afforded an unfailing supply of food." 

 This theory is altogether too ingenious. Primitive peoples are not 

 likely to have undertaken to cultivate anything the utility of which 

 had not been adequately demonstrated, and it is exactly with such 

 plants as Dioscorea and Pachyrhizus that the beginnings of primitive 

 agriculture might be expected. 3 Watt's theory, however, is of much 



1 In reality Cocos should be treated as a monotypic genus to contain only C. nucifera. 

 The remaining species also are not a natural assemblage and should be separated into 

 several generic groups. 



2 Dictionary of the Economic Products of India, vol. 3, p. 120. 



3 SeemaU has noted (Botany of the Herald, p. 73) that, with the exception of the 

 potato (Solanum), the root crops cultivated on the Isthmus of Panama, the yam 

 (Dioscorea alata), yuca (Manihot), camote (Batatas), and oto (Colocasia), are all 

 propagated by cuttings of great vitality, which "may be left for weeks in the field, 

 exposed to sun and rain, without receiving any injury." 



