tead of
fat oil from the meat."

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.

BOTANY.

The cocoanut (Cocos nucifera Linn.) is the sole oriental representative
of a tropical genus comprising nineteen species, restricted, with
this single exception, to the New World.

Its geographical distribution is closely confined to the two
Tropics. [2]

Not less than nineteen varieties of C. nucifera are described by
Miquel and Rumphius, and all are accepted by Filipino authors.

Whether all of these varieties are constant enough to deserve
recognition need not be considered here. Many are characterized by
the fruits being distinctly globular, others by fruits of a much
prolonged oval form, still others by having the lower end of the
fruit terminating in a triangular point.

In the Visayas there is a variety in which the fibrous outer husk
of the nut is sweet and watery, instead of dry and astringent, and
is chewed by the natives like sugar cane. Another variety occurs in
Luzon, known as "Pamocol," the fruit of which seldom exceeds 20 cm. in
diameter. There is also a dwarf variety of the palm, which rarely
exceeds 3 meters in height, and is known to the Tagalogs as "Adiavan."

These different varieties are strongly marked, and maintain their
characters when reproduced from seed.

USES.

The cocoanut furnishes two distinct commercial products--the dried
meat of the nut, or copra, and the outer fibrous husk. These products
are so dissimilar that they should be considered separately.

COPRA AND COCOANUT OIL.

Until very recent years the demand for the "meat" of the cocoanut
or its products was limited to the uses of soap boilers and
confectioners. Probably there is no other plant in the vegetable
kingdom which serves so many and so varied purposes in the domestic
economy of the peoples in whose