32 
The Philippine Journal of Science 
1917 
germinate; for in such cases it is possible that it might succeed 
in reaching the albumen by gnawing at the young sprout with 
its mandibles. 
DID THE COCONUT PALM EXIST IN AMERICA BEFORE THE DISCOVERY 
OF THAT CONTINENT BY CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS? 
Admitting that the coconut palm did exist in America on the 
Pacific coast before the discovery of the continent by Europeans, 
the data, on which Cook formed his opinion that from there it 
was disseminated on the Atlantic side, are so few and uncertain, 
that they offer little that can convince one of the correctness 
of his thesis. On the other hand, I cannot but wonder why 
the first sailors who reached that continent have not even men- 
tioned the coconut palm, if for no other reason than because 
of the refreshing milk its fruit contains; whereas, there is not 
a sailor in the East who does not speak of the natives bringing 
coconuts to strangers to quench their thirst. Amerigo Vespucci, 
in his voyages — and he was the first who sailed along the whole 
length of the tropical east coast of America to the Gulf of 
Mexico and the Antilles — does not once tell us that the natives 
offered him anything of the kind. This appears very strange, 
since in Asia and in the Malayan islands coconuts are almost 
the first things offered by the natives to all new comers. I have 
no difficulty in admitting that Polynesians, Malayans, or Pa- 
puans may have reached and established themselves on the 
Pacific shore of tropical America,^^ and that they may have 
” The belief, widely accredited, that natives of Asiatic, Polynesian, or 
Papuan origin exist on the western coasts of Central America would 
appear to be confirmed also by what Amerigo Vespucci writes in the account 
of his first voyage [Libro de viaggi di Amerigo Vespucci, di Stanislao 
Canovai: Firenze, Tipografia Tofani (1832)]. He relates that while sail- 
ing (as it would seem) along the coasts of the Caribbean Sea, in the 
neighborhood of the Isthmus of Panama, he landed on an island in that 
sea about 15 leagues from the mainland, in which he found the most 
brutish and hideous people he had ever seen; he says that these savages 
had their mouths so full of an herb which they continually chewed that 
they could hardly speak. Each wore at his neck two small dry gourds, 
one holding the herb they were chewing, the other containing a white 
powder, which looked like powdered gypsum; into this one they dipped 
from time to time a little stick of the shape of a spindle, previously 
moistened in their mouths, and therewith flavored the herb they chewed 
with the aforesaid powder. It seems indubitable to me that such a custom 
corresponds to that which generally prevails among the Malays and other 
Asiatic populations at this day, of chewing the leaf of the betel and other 
things together with powdered lime, for the last must have been the white 
powder of which Vespucci speaks. 
