History.

To this day the origin of the cocoanut is unknown. De Candolle (Origin of Cult. Plants, p. 574) recites twelve specific claims pointing to an Asiatic origin, and a single, but from a scientific standpoint almost unanswerable, contention for an American derivation. None of the remaining nineteen species of the genus Cocos are known to exist elsewhere in the world than on the American continent. His review of the story results in the nature of a compromise, assigning to our own Islands and those to the south and west of us the distinction of having first given birth to the cocoanut, and that thence it was disseminated east and west by ocean currents.