260 ORIGIN AND DISTRIBUTION OF THE COCOA PALM. 



Doubtless as a result of his studies in plant geography, Grisebach 

 entertained a belief in the American origin of the cocoanut and placed 

 its original habitat on the western coast of Panama. 1 



The reasons for this opinion seem never to have been explained; but 

 the indications are that Grisebach accepted De Candolle's suggestion 

 that the cocoa palm did not not occur normally on the American main- 

 land, but at the same time appreciated the logical necessity of asso- 

 ciating the species as closely as possible with the American palm flora. 

 In any event, the Panama theory, while sometimes quoted out of 

 deference to Grisebach's botanical reputation, has received no general 

 attention or acceptance, and the belief in an Asiatic origin, with a 

 possible maritime or accidental introduction to the islands of the Bay 

 of Panama, is still generally held. 



To De Candolle and other writers Seeman's objection to an Ameri- 

 can nativity has seemed adequate and incontrovertible, namely, the 

 relatively small importance of the cocoa palm in America compared 

 with its great and highly diversified utility on the shores and islands 

 of tropical Asia. But, as suggested elsewhere, the abundance of other 

 useful plants in America gave little incentive to specialization of the 

 cocoanut, while the poverty of the indigenous floras of the Pacific 

 islands focused human attention on the few species obtainable and led 

 to the discovery of a great variety of secondaiy uses. Thus the Poly- 

 nesians, for want of more suitable materials, make fish nets from the 

 filters of the yam bean (Pachyrhizus), one of the most primitive of 

 tropical culture plants and probably of American origin, though the 

 fiber is not known to be used either in America or in Asia, whither 

 the plant was carried in prehistoric times. 



But use is, after all, primarily a function of human skill and indus- 

 try and may be no index of nativity. Nearly all the plants cultivated 

 in the United States are of exotic origin, and a large proportion of the 

 more important species came from the Old World. Moreover, if we 

 think of the cocoa palm as having passed gradually across the Pacific, 

 it is easy to understand that in addition to the uses discovered by the 

 Polynesians there would be transferred to it when it approached the 

 shores of Asia a large variety of requirements which had been met 

 previously by some of the numerous economic palms native in the 

 Malay region. Thus toddy or palm wine has been drawn since time 

 immemorial from a considerable number of Asiatic and Malayan spe- 

 cies by methods which it was not difficult to adapt to the cocoanut. 

 This and many other human arts and adaptations which have been 

 interpreted as indications of the very great antiquity of the species in 

 Asia may possibly have Ween developed in connection with indigenous 

 species and have been ready and waiting, as it were, for the arrival of 

 the cocoanut. 



1 Flora of the British West Indies, p. 522 (1864). 



