COOK THE COCONUT PALM IN AMEKICA. 309 



fruits may be partly due to change of soil and climate, for the tree is not found wild 

 in the Amazon district, but is invariably planted near the Indians' houses. In their 

 villages many hundreds of these trees may often be seen, adding to the beauty of the 

 landscape, and supplying the inhabitants with an abundance of wholesome food. In 

 fact it here takes the place of the cocoa-nut in the East, and is almost as much 

 esteemed. 



The peach palm is one of the gregarious or cespitose species that 

 send up shoots from underground rootstocks. It is regularly propa- 

 gated by the use of these young shoots as cuttings, much as in the 

 case of the date palm. It might be inferred that the culture of the 

 peach palm is older than that of the date because some of the varieties 

 are seedless. The propagation of plants from cuttings appears to 

 represent an older s} T stem of agriculture than the raising of plants 

 from seeds. Some of the more primitive Indian tribes are accus- 

 tomed to grow cassava, sweet potatoes, and other root crops from 

 cuttings, though they do not plant corn or beans. The celebrated 

 English botanist, Richard Spruce, who spent eleven years in the 

 interior of South America, was especially impressed with the agricul- 

 tural importance of the peach palm among the Indians, and attempted 

 to solve the problem of its origin by finding it in a wild state. 



. . . I tried in vain to find a root for this name [pijiguao] in any of the native lan- 

 guages, and when I asked the people where they supposed the palm had originally 

 come from they pointed westward and said, "From the Cordilleras;" and I got a 

 similar answer from the natives of the Uaupes. 



When at length I reached those Cordilleras and traveled along their eastern foot 

 from 7° S. latitude to the Equator, I found, indeed, the Peach Palm very abundant, 

 but still only in the neighborhood of habitations, and always a cultivated plant. If, 

 however, I remained in as complete ignorance as before of its true native country, I 

 saw at once that the Venezuelans, along with the plant, had got also its name from the 

 Andes, but travestied; for the Peruvians call it (in their native Quichua) "Pisho- 

 guayo, " i. e. Bird-Fruit, whence to "pijiguao" the transition is easy. . . . 



Although I am compelled to leave the native country of the Peach Palm doubtful, 

 I quite expect the wild plant will still be met with in some unexplored recess of the 

 Oriental Andes, perhaps with the fruit so much smaller and drier than what it has 

 become by long cultivation as to be not easily recognizable. Spruce, Richard, 

 Palmae Amazonicae, Journ. Linn. Soc, vol. 11, pp. 81, 82, 1871. 



A FIBER PALM DOMESTICATED IN BRAZIL. 



Wallace also reports the domestication of another of the spiny rela- 

 tives of the coconut in the interior of Brazil, not for the sake of the 

 fruits, but for a fiber derived from the young leaves: 



Every part of this palm [Astrocaryum vulgare] bristles with sharp spines so as to 

 render it difficult to handle any portion of it; yet it is of great importance to the Indi- 

 ans, and in places where it is not indigenous, is cultivated with care in their mandiocca 

 fields and about their houses, along with the "Pupunha" and other fruit trees. Yet 

 they use neither the fruit, the stem, nor the full-grown leaves. It is only the unopened 



a Wallace, A. R., Palm Trees of the Amazon and their Uses, pp. 93-94. (London, 

 1853.; 



