VIEWS OF EMINENT BOTANISTS. 259 



CURRENT OPINIONS AND INFERENCES. 



De Candolle's verdict on the origin of the cocoanut was rendered in 

 rather impressive form, and has commanded more general confidence 

 than even that author himself could have expected. 



I formerly thought that the arguments in favor of Western America were the 

 strongest. Now, with more information and greater experience in similar questions, 

 I incline to the idea of an origin in the Indian archipelago. The extension toward 

 China, Ceylon, and India dates from not more than three thousand or four thousand 

 years ago, but the transport by sea to the coasts of America and Africa took place, 

 perhaps, in a more remote epoch, although posterior to those epochs when the 

 geographical and physical conditions were different to those of our day. 1 



Martius, Spruce, and Wallace, the most eminent naturalists who 

 have made detailed studies of the palms of South America, have all 

 accepted without serious question the Asiatic or Polynesian origin of 

 Cocos nucifera, though well aware that all the other species of the 

 genus are natives of South America. 



Eighteen species of Cocos are known, seventeen being natives of South America, 

 principally of Brazil, while only one, the well-known cocoanut, is a native of the 

 Old World, though it is now universally cultivated in every part of the tropics. Few 

 species of the genus are found in the Amazon district. They appear to prefer drier 

 and more elevated countries, some of them reaching an altitude of near 8,000 feet 

 above the sea. 2 



Relying on such opinions a recent anthropological writer, with an 

 appreciation of the advantages of direct communication, but with com- 

 plete disregard of historical fact, has advanced the idea that the cocoa- 

 nut and the banana were introduced by the Spaniards, not from the 

 East, but from the West, and at a date subsequent to those of printed 

 books containing accounts of both plants as existing in large quantities 

 in America. 



The presence in America of the banana, which, like the cocoanut, has been fanci- 

 fully accounted for as the result of some prehistoric dissemination, bears witness to 

 the contact with the East. The banana, which can be propagated only by living 

 plants, came to Mexico by way of Manila within the last three hundred years and 

 has been widely distributed over the tropics of America. The same is true of the 

 plantain. 3 



1 Origin of Cultivated Plants, p. 435. (London, 1886.) 



2 Alfred Eussel Wallace, Palm Trees of the Amazon and their Uses, p. 124. (Lon- 

 don, 1853). 



3 American Anthropologist, 1900, p. 70. On the contrary, the Philippine varieties 

 of the banana seem not to have been introduced into Mexico even yet. The early 

 introduction from the Philippines of plants propagated by cuttings and short-lived 

 seeds is also not to be assumed without proof, since the voyage to Mexico was much 

 longer than the return journey, owing to the necessity of sailing around the north 

 Pacific to secure favorable winds. Moreover, the sailing route from the Philippines 

 to Mexico was not discovered until about forty years after the publication of Oviedo's 

 account of the cocoanut and banana in America. Regular communication was not 

 opened until another decade had passed. 



