Notes . 
1 86 
same, or otherwise knew imperfectly, wrote “ cocoa/’ I cannot say abso- 
lutely who first did so ; I have a quotation from Thomson’s Seasons 
with COCOa [Give me to drain the cocoa’s milky bowl] ; 
but I suspect (and hope) that this is only in later editions. Dr. 
Johnson, who rightly wrote “ coco,” pi. “ cocoes,” in his Life of Drake, 
written 1779, did not know the difference between “coco” and 
“ cacao ” when he made his Dictionary in 1755, and so, after explaining 
“ cocoa ” as “ [ cacoatal , Span, and therefore more properly written 
cacao]” he actually illustrates it by a quotation from Miller for Cocos 
nucifera (which Miller himself wrote “ coco ”), and another from Hill’s 
Materia Medica for the “ cacao” of Central America, thus identifying 
the two. I strongly suspect this blunder of the Doctor’s was the 
source of all subsequent confusion. 
‘Bailey’s Dictionary, in every edition from 1721 to Johnson’s time, 
completely separated 
“ Coco-tree : an Indian tree, much like a date-tree, the nut of 
which contains a sweet substance,” &c., from 
“ Cocao , Cacao , Cacoa : an Indian nut of which chocolate is made.” 
* Botanists and careful writers long after that stuck to “ coco,” as 
does also Tennyson in Enoch Arden — 
[The slender coco’s drooping crown of plumes.] 
‘ I shall certainly use “coco” in the Dictionary, and treat “cocoa ” 
as an incorrect by-form/ 
It is to be hoped that botanists of the present day will range them- 
selves amongst the ‘ careful writers ’ and ‘ those who know,’ and use 
the correct ‘ coco,’ for the spelling of the word has more than a 
purely philological interest. How many persons are there now who, 
like Dr. Johnson in 1755, believe that ‘cocoa’ (the product of Theo - 
broma Cacao , L.) is derived from the coco-nut palm ( Cocos nucifera , L.), 
and find in the wrong spelling an encouragement to their belief! 
Now too that ‘ coca’ (the product of Erythroxylon Coca , Lamk.) — a 
word by the way which along with ‘ coker ’ and 4 cocar ’ is found also 
as a variant of ‘ coco ’ — has become so important a therapeutic agent, 
correct orthography is even more necessary. Numerous as are the 
valuable properties of the coco-nut palm they stop short of supplying 
the beverage ‘ cocoa ’ and the drug ‘ coca ; ’ and yet I have known of 
people who were content in the belief that this palm was the source 
of both of them. 
ISAAC BAYLEY BALFOUR, Oxford. 
