292 CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE NATIONAL HERBARIUM. 



but they belong in reality to a distinct group, much more related to 

 the Cuban royal palm than to the coconuts 



Excepting a few planted very recently by a treasure seeker living 

 on the island, the only coconut palms found by Professor Pittier 

 were a small cluster near the southwestern end, on a beach so pro- 

 tected by rocks and breakers that landing from the sea is quite 

 impracticable. The mountains visible from the anchorages at the 

 other end of the island are clothed with the Euterpe palms, not 

 with coconut palms. The treasure seeker had brought coconuts 

 from Puntarenas, Costa Rica, and planted them at Wafer Bay, but 

 these were found to be different from those already growing on the 

 island. Some of the latter had also been planted recently at Chat- 

 ham Bay. 



De Candolle refers to Dampier as having found an abundance of 

 coco palms on Cocos Island and looks on their presence on an unin- 

 habited island so close to the American continent as an additional 

 reason for believing that the shores of the New World might have 

 been stocked by sea-borne nuts from the archipelagoes of the Pacific. 

 It has been shown in the previous paper that Dampier did not visit 

 this Cocos Island, and that the "island of cocos" to which Dampier 

 referred was near the coast of Colombia. It was not, as De Candolle 

 supposed, the Cocos Island of modern maps. 6 



From the preceding facts it might be inferred that Cocos Island 

 had been misnamed as a result of mistaking the Euterpe palms for 

 coconuts, but there is historical evidence to justify the name. 

 Although Dampier, as before stated, did not visit Cocos Island, we 

 have an authentic account by Wafer of the existence of large num- 

 bers of coconuts on this island in 1685. Wafer was at one time 

 Dampier' s first officer, and his " Travels" are often bound with 

 Dampier's "Voyages." This may explain De Candolle's citation 

 of Dampier's statement as applying to the modern Cocos Island. 

 Though Wafer was not a botanist, his account of the coconuts of 

 Cocos Island is too circumstantial to permit us to doubt that coco- 

 nuts existed in abundance in his day. 



Our men being tolerably well recover'd, we stood away [from the Gulph of Ama- 

 palla] to the Southward, and came to the Island Cocos, in 5 Deg. 15 Min. N. Lat. 

 'Tis so called from its Coco-Nuts, wherewith 'tis plentifully stor'd. 'Tis but a small 

 Island, yet a very pleasant one: For the Middle of the Island is a steep Hill, sur- 

 rounded all about with a Plain, declining to the Sea. This Plain, and particularly 



a The resemblance lies in the shape and position of the leaves when seen at a little 

 distance. The crown of leaves of the royal palm does not resemble that of the coco- 

 nut, because the leaflets are inserted at different angles along the midrib, but this is 

 not the case in the Porto Rico mountain palm (Acrista monticola) nor in the still 

 more graceful ternera or halaute (Plectis oweniana) that adorns the summits of many 

 limestone mountains in eastern Guatemala. 



t> Contributions from the U. S. National Herbarium, vol. 7, pp. 264, 265. (1901.) 



