336 MR. W. BOTTI>a HEMSLEY ON THE 



Six lies, &c. ; tbeir diameter attaining six or seven feet, and their 

 height fifty or sixty feet from the base to the branches. Its 

 timber has been so much sought after that in many places it has 

 been completely destroyed without pity, and its place taken by 

 cocoa-nut trees. Gayac is in great demand for ship-building; 

 nearly all the ships built at Seychelles having been principally 



r 



constructed of this wood." 



The Gayac is a member of the Leguminosae found in the Sey- 

 chelles, Madagascar, the Malay peninsula and archipelago, and 

 in Western Polynesia, and is everywhere valued for its timber. 

 When Mr. Bourne was at Diego Garcia there was only one clump 

 of four or five trees remaining; and he was informed that it did 

 not increase in consequence of the rats eating the seeds as soon 

 as they fall. 



Cordia svhcordata is another tree inhabiting Diego Garcia 

 which attains a large size, but only when it forms forests in humid 

 situations. On the authority of Forster (Seemann, * Flora Vi- 

 tiensis,* p. 169), it occasionally reaches a height of eighty feet 

 and upwards ; and when Darwin visited the Keeling Islands, in 

 the eastern part of the Indian Ocean, there w^ere considerable 



w 



forests of it in those islands. Still this could scarcely have been 

 the " Bois Mapan '* of Diego Garcia, because it has a very hard 

 durable wood. Mibiscus tiliaceus^ a common oceanic tree, not 

 now found in Diego Garcia, grows rapidly and has a soft perish- 

 able wood. But what the large trees of Diego Garcia were 

 must remain conjectural, unless tliere are any records in the 

 Paris Museum, for it seems that the French surveyed and 

 explored the islands in 1744, though no results have been 



published. 



Below is a tabular view of the probably indigenous plants of 

 Diego Garcia with their general distribution. 



