THE ORIGIN AND DISTRIBUTION OF THE 



COCOA PALM. 



INTRODUCTOEY. 



Few groups of plants as widely distributed as the palms have their 

 species, genera, and even families so strictly limited geographically. 

 A large proportion of the genera are monotypic, and many of the 

 species are confined to small islands or localized in equally circum- 

 scribed continental areas. Thus, not only are all the species and 

 genera of American palms different from those of Asia, but several 

 genera are peculiar to the intervening islands of the Pacific, though 

 most of these are of Asiatic rather than of American affinities. To 

 the above rule the generally credited Asiatic or Malayan origin of the 

 cocoa palm has furnished the single exception, all of its relatives being 

 American. Curiosity regarding the nature of the evidence by which 

 such an anomaly of distribution could be established and explained has 

 led, first, to a review of the data relating to the long known, though 

 frequently forgotten, fact that the cocoanut was in America before the 

 discovery of this continent by Europeans; and, second, to a belief 

 that the supposed proof of the extra- American origin of the cocoanut 

 is not only inadequate, but that the theory of such an origin is incom- 

 patible with numerous collateral facts. 



In attempting to present an alternative view a remarkable amount 

 of traditional error and confusion has been encountered; indeed, a 

 thorough examination and elucidation of the misconceptions which 

 have grown up about this question would require far more time and 

 space than the discussion of gratuitous errors can ever deserve. And 

 yet many of the points involved are of interest and importance outside 

 the immediate problem, in that they relate to facts and inferences 

 bearing upon all similar discussions, in which systematic biology and 

 ecology are combined with anthropology, philology, history, and tra- 

 dition. Finally, an immediate justification of a somewhat detailed dis- 

 cussion of the origin of the cocoa palm is to be found in the fact that 

 it furnishes a not unfair example of the treatment which similar 

 questions have received at the hands of De Candolle and others whose 

 opinions are commonly cited with confidence by both botanists and 



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