334 CONTKIBUTIONS FKOM THE NATIONAL HERBARIUM. 



soil. Under favorable conditions upon the seabeach the coconut 

 palm may require only one form of assistance from man — protection 

 against the shade of other vegetation — but in other places it may 

 become dependent upon man for its water supply and for the saline 

 constituents of the soil. 



ABSENCE OF C0C03OJT PALMS OF THE COAST OF PERU. 



The failure of archaeologists to find coconut shells in the ancient 

 graves of Peru was used by De Candolle as an argument against the 

 American origin of the palm, but coconuts still refuse to grow along 

 the Peruvian coast, in spite of efforts to introduce them. Other 

 palms flourish in the botanical gardens at Lima, but numerous 

 experiments have shown that the coconut is entirely unsuited to the 

 local conditions. Although much of the coast belt of Peru lies inside 

 the Tropics, the sky is overcast and the weather continuously cool for 

 several months of the year, a result of the cold Humboldt current 

 that follows the Peruvian coast. The unfavorable climate continues 

 northward nearly to Guayaquil, where the cloud belt is passed and 

 the coco palm thrives." 



The English botanist Spruce, who made a special study of the 

 vegetation of this region, considers that the Peruvian desert extends 

 along the coast even farther north than Guayaquil, almost to the 

 equator, his first mention of coconuts growing on the coast being at 

 1° 5' south latitude. 



The northern limit of the Peruvian desert is usually placed about Tumbez, at the 

 southern extremity of the Gulf of Guayaquil, in latitude 3° 30 / S., but I now know, 

 from personal inspection, that the coast of the Pacific north of the gulf has the same 

 geological conformation, the same climate, and almost as scanty a vegetation as it has 

 south of it. At what point to northward the struggle between barrenness and fertility 

 begins to be equally balanced I am unable to say, but I am inclined to place it about 

 Cape Pasado, at the mouth of the river Chones. Guayaquil itself, as seen from the 

 river, with its groves of coco palms and fruit trees, and its picturesque wooded hills, 

 might be supposed a region of forests; but the moment we pass the skirts of the city to 

 westward we find that the country is nearly all savanna, either open and grassy or 

 scattered over with bushes and low groves, and that the woods are confined to the hiUs 

 and to the borders of salt-creeks. . . . 



About Cape San Lorenzo (latitude 1° 5' S.) the coast is bold and broken, and almost 

 completely clad with low bushy vegetation. In the village of the same name, which 

 nestles in the bay to southward of the cape, at the mouth of a small stream, the houses 

 stand mixed with Coco palms and Plantains, and steep wooded declivities rise at the 

 back. . . . 



A little farther northward, on the river Chones, there is real forest, from which much 

 timber is obtained for Guayaquil. & 



a For the facts stated in this paragraph I am indebted to Mr. W. E. Safford, of the 

 Bureau of Plant Industry, U. S. Department of Agriculture. 



b Spruce, Richard, Notes of a Botanist on the Amazon and Andes, edited by A. R. 

 Wallace, vol. 2, pp. 328, 329. (London, 1908.) 



