COOK THE COCONUT PALM IN AMEEICA. 297 



personally communicated by Dr. W. E. Inksetter, of Alajuela, Costa 

 Rica. A coconut, with the husk intact, was found on the beach in 

 the island of Ronsay, in the Orkney group, to the north of Scotland, 

 in the winter of 1892-93. Doctor Inksetter saw the nut and drank 

 some of the milk, which was still in good condition. 



But of what advantage is such transportation if the nut encounters 

 unfavorable conditions when it lands, and thus fails to germinate or 

 to grow to maturity and establish its seedlings in turn ? We should 

 find on some tropical coast a place where the palms thrive and 

 multiply, where we find old palms surrounded by flourishing young 

 ones, growing spontaneously, without the aid of man, but no such 

 instance has been reported. Instances of floating nuts or of sup- 

 posedly self-sown palms indicate the opposite of what they are some- 

 times thought to prove, for the failure of the palms to persist is only 

 emphasized by showing that opportunities have been ample. There 

 seems to be no authentic record of coco palms establishing and 

 maintaining themselves on any tropical coast in a wild or truly 

 spontaneous condition. A palm that is unable to maintain itself 

 on the land has nothing to gain by having its nuts drifted about by 

 the sea. 



The complete absence of coconuts from the extensive tropical 

 coast line of Australia until planted by European colonists has 

 already been cited as a gigantic experiment showing that the coconut 

 did not establish itself without human help, even in a place where it 

 afterwards thrived in cultivation. It is known that the shores of 

 Australia were visited yearly by many Malay fishing boats carrying 

 large quantities of coconuts among their food supplies. Many nuts 

 have also been found cast up on the tropical beach of Australia. 

 The palms exist in large numbers on small islands in the Torres 

 Straits, only 30 or 40 miles from the Australian coast. The contrast 

 between these palm-covered islands and the palmless shores of Aus- 

 tralia has made a strong impression upon eyewitnesses. 



Murray Island is about 700 feet high at its highest point, and consists of steep 

 broken ground. Its whole aspect is singularly different from any part of Australia, 

 since the whole of its lower portion, and a good part even of the hills, is covered by a 

 continuous grove of cocoa-nut trees. The entire absence of these trees from every part 

 of Australia is a most striking fact, since it is, I believe, the only country in the world 

 so much of which lies within the Tropics in which they have never been found. We 

 had once or twice found cocoa-nuts on the beach, still more or less fresh; and here is 

 an island, absolutely within the Great Barrier reef, completely covered by them, 

 and yet neither by Flinders, King, Wickham, Stokes, or ourselves have any trees 

 been discovered anywhere upon the mainland. We could perceive many natives 

 on the beach of Murray Island, as also a nearly continuous line of large dome-shaped 



