272 CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE NATIONAL HERBARIUM. 



for the characters that have been looked upon as special adaptations 

 for maritime dissemination. 



The huge seed with its immense store of food materials and its 

 thick fibrous husk make it possible for the coconut to propagate itself 

 in the relatively dry interior localities where it appears to have orig- 

 inated. The inability of the palm to withstand shade explains why 

 it has been unable to establish itself as a wild plant on any tropical 

 seacoast. The application of these facts to cultural problems shows 

 that the possibilities of an extratropical extension of the coconut 

 palm are not to be realized on seacoasts, but in interior desert regions 

 where larger amounts of heat and sunlight are to be obtained. 



Though the biological evidence of the American origin of the coco- 

 nut palm appears complete and adequate, recent years have brought 

 to light several additional facts which may be of use to those whose 

 training and habits of thought lead them to attach great weight to 

 the historical arguments of De Candolle and other writers who 

 believed in the Old World origin of this palm and its dissemination 

 by the sea. The reader is impressed by De Candolle's references to 

 many old and rare books, and will naturally remain loth to believe 

 that so eminent an authority could have come to an erroneous con- 

 clusion, unless all the foundations of his opinions are carefully 

 reexamined. 



It is important to trace and clear away any mistakes or false 

 deductions which obscure the early history of cultivated plants. Mis- 

 conceptions regarding the origin and dissemination of any important 

 economic species tend to distort human history as well as to mislead 

 botanical and agricultural investigation. It is only when we view 

 the past with the right perspective that we gain correct ideas of the 

 factors which control our present interests and our future progress. 

 Civilization itself is based on cultivated plants, and history may be 

 written with as much propriety from the agricultural standpoint as 

 from the military, political, or commercial. 



Many of the plants valued by primitive man have found no place 

 in our civilization, but have gone more or less completely out of use, 

 either because other species of better quality or more abundant yield 

 have taken their places, or because their uses have been outgrown. 

 The coconut does not belong among the plants of waning importance. 

 Its cultivation is being extended in many parts of the Tropics, and 

 its products are rapidly gaining places in the domestic economy of 

 the most civilized nations of Europe and America. The probability 

 is great that the coconut palm will be recognized eventually as a food 

 plant of the first rank, not merely by the natives of the Malayan and 

 Polynesian islands, but by the whole civilized world. 



Coconuts are an important product in Porto Eico, Hawaii, and the 

 Philippines. A coconut industry has been established in southern 



