DIFFICULTIES OF MARITIME DISTRIBUTION. 277 
waves. It is only where the shore is being undermined or through 
some other relatively infrequent accident that the nuts would fall into 
the water. It is true that accounts of floating cocoanuts are to be 
found in Dampier’s Voyages and elsewhere, but such records show the 
rarity rather than the frequency of the occurrence and give us, in 
addition, no evidence on the viability of the seed observed. The addi- 
tional facts may be cited on that side that the Hindoos have a festival 
in which it is customary to throw large numbers of cocoanuts into the 
sea, while many must be swept away from the coasts of continents and 
large islands by floods and swollen rivers. But it is far from correct 
to suppose that all nuts which reach the water are really launched for 
‘oceanic wanderings; the chances are still hundreds to one that they 
will be thrown back immediately upon their own coast, like other 
objects floating in the surf. High waves or tides, instead of floating 
shore débris away, merely carry it farther inland, as everybody famil- 
iar with seacoasts knows. 
Then from the nuts which might reach the open sea take all except 
the infinitesimal number which would arrive anywhere while still 
alive, and reduce this by an equally great proportion which would 
simply be cast up to dry on the sand; reduce again for those which 
would be thrown back and smothered in the bushes or find unsuitable 
conditions of growth, and you have left still a possibility, it is true, 
but of a very high order of intinitesimals and utterly inadequate to 
accomplish the widespread distribution of the present species. Empty 
husks must not be counted; these sit high in the water and might 
easily be floated or blown off shore and would make quick journeys.’ 
In Island Life, Wallace refers to the double cocoanut (Lodoicea 
maldivica) as furnishing a conspicuous Instance of maritime distribu- 
tion. In reality, however, this case proves just the contrary of what 
was intended: for, although double cocoanuts haye been thrown up for 
centuries on the shores of the Maldive Islands and of other parts of 
the East Indies, this transfer of nuts seems never to have resulted in 
the establishment of a single tree of Lodoicea outside the three small 
‘slands to which it is confined in the Seychelles. Until the explora- 
tions of Europeans resulted in the discovery of the palms, the Kast 
Indians had universally believed that the nuts were a marine product, 
on which they placed the highest value because of supposed medicinal 
qualities. 
Shipwrecks would undoubtedly furnish the most successful method 
of launching viable cocoanuts, and if, as has more than once happened 
'Experiments like those of Guppy (Journ. Trans. Victoria Inst., vol. 24, p. 305, 
1891) on the periods of flotation of seeds are of value, of course, only when it can be, 
shown that the dry seeds will germinate after floating for long periods in salt water. 
The drier the seeds to begin with, the better they will float, but many tropical 
species are like the cocoanut in that their seeds when dry are dead. 
