OCEANIC DISPERSAL OF PLANTS. 295 



surveying voyage. This proves not to be an oak, for since the foregoing was written, Dr 

 Guppy's collections have been presented by him to Kew, and the supposed oak, as Prof. 

 Oliver pointed out, is a laurel. It is a species of Litsea (Tetranthera), very closely allied 

 to an unnamed one at Kew from New Caledonia. It is only fair to Baron Mueller to 

 state that he did not see the fruit which Dr Guppy excusably mistook for acorns; and 

 the resemblance is so strong that a more experienced observer of botanical characters might 

 have been deceived at first sight. The fruit is the shape of a small acorn — that of Quercus 

 ilex, for example, and it is seated in a thickened, cupular perianth ; and the solitary seed 

 is exalbuminous, with large cotyledons filling the whole cavity. 



PALM/E. 

 Nipa fruticans, Wurmb. 



Seed-vessels in the New Guinea drift. 



The comparatively restricted area of this absolutely littoral palm is given in the 

 enumeration of the plants from the South-eastern Moluccas. It is an exceedingly abundant 

 plant in many parts of the Malayan Archipelago especially, covering large areas in the 

 tidal swamps. Chamisso (Bemerkungen auf einer Entdeckungs-Beise) enumerates this 

 among other seeds cast ashore at Java in a germinating condition. Sir Joseph Hooker, 

 describing the vegetation of the Sunderbunds (Himalayan Journals, ii. p. 355), says : 

 " Receding from the Megna, the water became Salter and Nipafruticans appeared, throwing 

 up pale yellow-green tufts of feathery leaves from a short, thick, creeping stem, and bearing 

 at the base of its leaves its great head of nuts, of which millions were floating on the water 

 and germinating in the mud." Dr Guppy has recently sent it from the Solomon Islands. 



Calamus sp. 



Fruits and a cluster of the spines from the rhachis of a leaf in the New Guinea 

 drift. The fruit was decayed, and contained no seed. 



PANDANE^E. 

 Pandanus spp. 



New Guinea drift. 



There are no specimens in the collection, but Moseley (Notes by a Naturalist, p. 433) 

 mentions that he observed the seeds of two species. 



Besides the foregoing more or less correctly determined seeds and seed-vessels from the 

 New Guinea drift, there are several which we cannot refer even to their natural orders. 



