340 CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE NATIONAL. HERBARIUM. 



De Candolle's inference from Acosta's report of coconuts in Porto 

 Rico at the end of the sixteenth century, that they had recently 

 been introduced by the Spaniards, proves to have no warrant in 

 history and is directly opposed by the more extended reference to 

 the coconut in Porto Rico by the Duke of Cumberland's chaplain, 

 who visited the island only a few years after Acosta. 



De Candolle's use of the testimony of Piso and Marcgrave to sup- 

 port the idea of the introduction of the coconut into Brazil by 

 Europeans is also unwarranted, since those writers only indicated 

 that the plant was cultivated. An earlier and more explicit record, 

 unknown to De Candolle, gives an account of the coconut as one of 

 the native products of Brazil. 



The journal of Cieza de Leon, who accompanied the first Spanish 

 expedition to the interior of Colombia, indicates the presence of the 

 coconut palm in localities where it still continues to exist, as shown 

 by the accounts of Velasco, Humboldt, and more recent travelers, 

 down to the present decade. 



ETHNOLOGICAL CONCLUSIONS. 



The American origin of the coconut palm and the strict limita- 

 tion of its status in maritime tropics to that of a cultivated plant 

 are facts of ethnological significance. The wide distribution of the 

 coconut in prehistoric times is evidence of the antiquity of agri- 

 culture in America and of very early communication across the 

 Pacific. 



The American origin of the coconut palm, along with its inability 

 to maintain itself on tropical seacoasts without human assistance, 

 compels us to believe that its trans-Pacific distribution was the work 

 of primitive man. The dependency of the Pacific islanders upon the 

 coconut may be taken to show that these islands could not have 

 been occupied without the previous domestication and dissemina- 

 tion of the coconut. 



In view of the fact that several other palms of unquestioned 

 American origin have been domesticated by aborigines of the Ameri- 

 can tropics, no ethnological objection can be raised to the idea that 

 the coconut palm was originally domesticated in ancient America. 



The name "coco" does not appear to have been applied to the 

 1 Indian nut" till after the discovery of America and is to be con- 

 sidered as a word derived from the natives of the West Indies. 

 Other native names for the coconut are found among primitive tribes 

 of Costa Rica, as well as in Brazil. 



The presence of large numbers of coconuts on Cocos Island in the 

 time of Wafer (1685) and their subsequent disappearance should be 

 considered as evidence that the island was formerly inhabited, or 



