COOK — THE COCONUT PALM IN AMERICA. 285 



another species of Cocos native in Brazil is called inaia mira, or small 

 coconut. Xo suspicion is betrayed that coconuts were not one of the 

 genuine products of the country, instead of a recent importation 

 from abroad. The statements of later writers on Brazil and Guiana, 

 such as Aublet, Martius, Spruce, Burton, and Wallace, are in entire 

 accord with that of Piso and Marcgrave. They do not claim that 

 the coconut is native in eastern South America, but find it widely 

 distributed in cultivation. 



Piso's is not, however, the first reference to the coconut in Brazil, 

 as De Candolle seems to have supposed. More direct and conclu- 

 sive evidence was published nearly a quarter of a century before from 

 a Portuguese friar who had resided in Brazil for the last three decades 

 of the sixteenth century." This writing has also a direct bearing 

 on the question of introduction by Europeans, since it contains a 

 special enumeration of the plants brought to Brazil by the Portu- 

 guese. The coconut does not occur in this list, but is included 

 among the native cultivated plants. 



In this Brasill are many coco-nuts, excellent like those of India; these are ordi- 

 narilly set, and growe not in the Woods, but in Gardens, and in their Farms. And 

 there are more than twentie kindes of Palme trees, and almost all doe beare fruit, but 

 not so good as the Cocos: with some of these Palme trees they couer their houses. & 



Exactly the same might have been written of the peach palm 

 (Guilielma), the other indigenous palm widely cultivated in prehis- 

 toric times by the Indians of South America. But since the peach 

 palm did not attain a world-wide distribution no question of its 

 South American nativity has ever been raised, though it has never 

 been found in the wild state. 



The statements of the early historians that the coconut palms did 

 not grow wild in the forest, but only where they had been planted, 

 instead of supporting the idea of an introduction by the Portuguese 

 colonists is better evidence to the contrary, for it becomes highly 

 improbable that such a piece of history would have been omitted 

 from the record. This consideration is even more conclusive in the 

 case of Brazil than in that of Porto Rico, for in that island it might 

 have been possible to raise the palms if the colonists had introduced 

 them early and propagated them with care and diligence. But in 

 Brazil there was actually no time for any multiplication and dissemi- 

 nation of the palms to have taken place, for the colonization of 

 Brazil by the Portuguese did not begin till after the middle of the 

 sixteenth century, or less than twenty years before the arrival of 

 the writer who states their abundance. 



a The manuscript of this unknown author was captured by an English sailor in 1601, 

 and an English translation was published in 1625 in Purchas His Pilgrims, vol. 4, 

 p. 1289. Piso's account of the coconut in Brazil was not issued until 1648. 



t> Purchas His Pilgrims, vol. 4, p. 1307. 



