378 The Philippine Journal of Science 1920 
Islands, and that it can compete successfully with the arborescent 
vegetation of tropical strand floras. He has called attention to 
the fallacy of the statement that Cook makes regarding the plant 
as seldom growing on the immediate strand, a statement cer- 
tainly made without sufficient knowledge of the species as it 
grows in nature ; for, as Beccari indicates, the immediate strand 
is the habitat par excellence for this palm in the vast Indo-Mala- 
yan-Polynesian region, as is witnessed by tens of thousands of 
miles of palm-lined shores in the Philippines and in the Tropics 
of the Old World as a whole. Again in support of his general 
thesis that the coconut was not disseminated by ocean currents, 
Cook illogically argues that the chances are hundreds to one that 
coconuts falling into the water will be thrown back immediately 
upon their own coast like other objects floating in the surf, and 
further that: “High waves or tides, instead of floating shore 
debris away, merely carry it farther inland, as everybody fa- 
milar with seacoasts knows.” If this be always true, as Beccari 
notes, we should have to evolve some other theory to explain 
the geographic distribution of the characteristic elements of the 
strand floras of the world. The revegetation of Krakatao, so far 
as its present strand flora is concerned, is in direct opposition 
to the idea that shore debris is always carried farther inland 
by the waves as Cook infers. 
Messrs. O. F. and R. C. Cook 3 have recently made the claim 
that Hibiscus tiliaceus Linn, appears to have been distributed 
over the islands and shores of the Pacific and Indian Oceans 
before the arrival of Europeans — a claim that no botanist fa- 
miliar with the geographic distribution of this characteristic spe- 
cies will dispute. When, however, they infer that the primitive 
Polynesians were in possession of this species before they became 
acquainted with similar Asiatic plants; that it may have been 
carried by them from America across the tropical regions of 
the Old World; and that, therefore, it is one of the economic 
plants to be taken into consideration in studying the problem 
of contacts between the inhabitants of tropical America and 
Polynesia in prehistoric times, it would seem advisable to 
present the data in opposition to this argument. 
With their first contention, “The maho [Hibiscus tiliaceus 
Linn.] * * * appears to have attained a trans-Pacific dis- 
tribution in prehistoric times,” no fault can be found, as the 
species is one having a true, and certainly natural, pantropic 
a Cook, 0. F., and Cook, R. C., The maho, or mahagua, as a trans- 
Pacific plant, Journ. Wash. Acad. Sci. 8 (1918) 153-170. 
