COYOLLI AND MAKON. 269 



Our modern curiosity as to how the cocoanut and other plants crossed 

 the Pacific had not yet developed. Hernandez learned about the Phil- 

 ippine plants by questioning travelers who were going and coming 

 across Mexico, but this was a matter far different from the introduc- 

 tion of the Philippine palms to use and culture in Mexico, which with 

 three more centuries of improved opportunity has not yet taken place. 

 Chocolate was certainly a far more important article to the Spaniards 

 than the cocoanut, and yet the cacao tree is believed not to have been 

 introduced from Mexico to the Philippines until after 1660, a century 

 later than Hernandez's visit; and Humboldt believed that Citrus tri- 

 foliata was the only Asiatic species which had become established in 

 Mexico. 1 This would seem to render improbable any very extensive 

 introductions of tropical plants at an earlier date, and is a strong 

 reminder that notwithstanding its obvious importance the introduction 

 of useful plants is a subject still generally neglected in the agriculture 

 of the most advanced countries, and even in dealing with plants which 

 can be grown from seed of indefinite vitality instead of with the deli- 

 cate and short-lived germs of tropical species. 



But to return to Hernandez. W e find in the sentence already quoted 2 

 the name maron ascribed to the "vulgus Indorum," or ordinary 

 Indians, as distinguished from the "Mexicensibus," a fact which 

 seems to have been entirely overlooked by De Candolle, who, after 

 dismissing coyolli, leaves us with the implication that no genuine 

 American name for the cocoanut was known. Possibly he supposed 

 this word to pertain to the East Indies, as does much of the essay of 

 Hernandez. Such, however, is not the case. Nothing resembling 

 maron appears in the extensive lists of Polynesian, Malayan, and 

 Asiatic names, but it was reported by Heller, in 1853, as apparently 

 still in use in southern Mexico. 



But etymological arguments based on old records are often of little 

 use except as literary confirmations of facts already ascertained b} r 

 more reliable evidence. Thus, the cocoa question might be carried 

 another stage around the world when we read, in Pigafetta's account 

 of the voyage of Magellan, that among the native products offered by 

 the people of the Philippine island of Samar that "one which they 

 call cochi is the fruit which the palm trees bear." But as no subse- 

 quent traveler has recorded such a name in that quarter of the globe, 

 we may reflect that Pigafetta was an Italian among Spaniards and 

 Portuguese sailors, some of whom had previously visited the " Indies, " 

 and that he did not show a philologist's caution in studying the forms 

 and origins of words. 



Although, as indicated above, the cocoanut is supposed to have been 



^oc. cit., vol. 2, p. 365. 2 P. 267, footnote. 



