318 CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE NATIONAL HERBARIUM. 



clears only when we are prepared to admit that the original colonists 

 in the Pacific islands were native of the same continent as the coconut 

 palm, so that they could take with them the cultivated plants on 

 which their future existence depended. By keeping close to the 

 practical agricultural facts we avoid the confusion to which De 

 Candolle and Seemann were brought by conflicting theoretical 

 methods of ascertaining the origins of plants. The uses of the coco- 

 nut have been most highly developed in the Pacific islands because 

 lack of other plants has compelled the inhabitants to depend more 

 and more upon the coconut. Necessity has given rise to the multi- 

 plicity of uses, but the palm itself had to be brought from the only 

 part of the world where such palms grew — South America. 



The relative!}^ slight economic importance of the coconut in America 

 could be given as a reason for believing that the palm was not intro- 

 duced into America by the Polynesians in the same way that Seemann 

 used the absence of toddy in Polynesia to prove that the palm was 

 not brought to the Pacific islands by people from Asia. 



It is gratuitous to object to human agency as accounting for the 

 spread of the coconut since there were other cultivated tropical plants, 

 such as the sweet potato and the banana which were also cultivated 

 on both sides of the Pacific, and must have been carried across by 

 the men who knew and used them. They are propagated only from 

 cuttings, would not survive soaking in salt water, and do not grow 

 on sea beaches. The indications are that nearly all the cultivated 

 plants which Polynesia shared with America were natives of America, 

 but whatever their source, they do not permit us to doubt that there 

 was communication across the Pacific by primitive agricultural 

 people. Ethnological evidence for such communication may also be 

 found in the similarities now commonly recognized between the 

 natives of America and the present inhabitants of eastern Asia and 

 the Malay region. That the straight-haired peoples of the East 

 Indies are not true aborigines of the countries they now occupy is 

 shown by the presence among them of remnants of the former curl- 

 haired populations, such as the Ainus in Japan, the Negritos in the 

 Philippines, the Alfuros of Gilolo and Ceram, the Papuans, and the 

 Andamanese. On the continent of Asia as well recent investiga- 

 tions are showing that primitive peoples related to the Negritos or to 

 the Ainus preceded the Malayan and Mongolian occupations. 



That the present Polynesians do not more closely resemble the 

 natives of America does not warrant an objection to the idea that 

 the coconut palm was originally carried into the Pacific islands from 

 America. Ethnologists are familiar with the fact that the prevail- 

 ing direction of recent racial movements in the Pacific has been from 

 west to east. Whatever may have been the conditions in the remote 

 times when the islands were first occupied, the island people have 



