THE COCO-NUT PALM (COCOS NUCIFERA, LINN.). 327 



small flowers have turned into fruits and these begin to swell to the 

 comparatively enormous size which they eventually attain, the ever- 

 increasing weight forces the spike to bend downward, till the mature 

 bunch of fruit — often weighing much more than a man can conveniently 

 lift — hangs down below the leaves. 



It may be as well here to say that there are many varieties of 

 coco-nut, i.e. Cocos nucifera, under cultivation in different parts of 

 the world, differing from each other very greatly in size and colour. 

 Botanists refuse to recognize any specific differences between these, 

 and they are probably right from their point of view, for all these 

 variations are probably the result of long cultivation— or rather of 

 long and probably partly unintentional selection. But for practical 

 purposes one cannot overlook the difference in size between, say, the 

 huge nut of Rotumah — which even without its husk is as large as an 

 average man's head — and the little " drinking-nut " which is grown 

 in the Friendly Islands for the express purpose of quenching the thirst 

 of the chiefs and nobles. This latter is so small that a section cut 

 from the centre of the nut serves as a very convenient napkin ring. 



Where the coco-nut palm — by which I mean all the varieties which 

 can without doubt be included in that useful class — originated, and what 

 has been the history of its distribution, in greater or less abundance, 

 throughout almost all the sea-coasts of the tropics, are matters quite 

 uncertain. It is not known, at least with any certainty, as a wild 

 species anywhere. Probably the most widely accepted story now 

 is that it originated at some point on the western side of Central 

 America. Briefly stated, the reasons for this belief are that by far 

 the greater number of the same genus Cocos — over seventy in 

 number — are tropical American ; that though the coco-nut is now 

 naturalized practically everywhere on the shores of tropical seas it 

 has almost certainly been longer and more thoroughly established in 

 the islands of the Pacific than elsewhere ; that it is next best established 

 in the Indian Ocean, especially in the Maldives and Ceylon ; and that 

 though present it appears to be least well and least long on the eastern 

 side oi America and in Africa — of all tropical areas. And, lastly, the 

 great ocean currents of the Pacific are just such as would account for 

 the natural distribution of the coco-nut from some point on the west 

 coast of tropical America to the places, as has just been said, where 

 the tree now appears most at home. 



It seems to me that there can be little doubt that the coco-nut 

 was originally distributed — at any rate through the Pacific — mainly 

 naturally, i.e. by the floating of the large, buoyant, and thoroughly 

 water-proofed nut, with husk on, along the great ocean currents. The 

 poet Longfellow has vividly described another kind of flotsam as 

 " Ever drifting, drifting, drifting 

 On the shifting 

 Currents of the restless main ; 

 Till in sheltered coves and reaches 



Of sandy beaches 

 All have found repose again," 



