TRISTAN DA CUNHA. 135 



appear to flower all the year round, others have their regular 

 blooming season. This is the case with the Pelargonium and 

 the Tea plant. The Pelargonium blossoms, according to the 

 Germans, in the middle of summer. Large numbers of the plants 

 come into blossom at the same time, so that the beach is thickly 

 strewn with the coloured petals fallen from the cliffs. 



The Tea plant was nowhere found in blossom hi October, 

 though it was abundant. The Phylica trees were all in the 

 same stage of development, bearing fully formed but green fruit. 



The existence of the Cape Horn current sweeping up to 

 the islands, may account for the presence of many South 

 American plants in them. The part of the Brazilian current 

 which turns from the coast of South America, and runs across to 

 the Tristan group, brings with it many seeds to the islands, but 

 these, being tropical, do not germinate. The seeds are cast upon 

 the beach at Tristan, and are familiarly known amongst the 

 islanders as sea beans, from a belief that they grow at the bottom 

 of the neighbouring sea. 



Two of these seeds were shown to me ; one of them was a 

 bean of a tropical American tree, the other was the seed of a 

 Guilandina* also tropical, which seed, singularly enough, is also 

 cast up sometimes at Bermuda, and is there called a sea bean, 

 and worn on watch chains as a curiosity, and I believe as an 

 antidote to drowning. • 



Sir Joseph Hooker, in his lately published account of the 

 Botany of Kerguelen's Land,| writes : " The flora of Tristan da 

 Cunha, Nightingale and Inaccessible Islands, is essentially 

 Puegian, with an admixture of Cape Genera, but with none of 

 those characteristic of Kerguelen's Island. Of Cape types it 

 contains a Pelargonium and an abundance of both the Phylica 

 and Spartina of Amsterdam Island, together with species of 

 Oxalis and Hyclrocotyle. The Puegian and Falkland Island 

 plants of Tristan da Cunha and its islets, which have not 

 hitherto been found in the islands south and east of them, are 

 however, more numerous than the Cape genera even, and include 



* See page 17. 



t Transit of Venus Expedition, Botany. " Observations on the Botany 

 of Kerguelen's Land," p. 8. By Sir J. D. Hooker, P.B.S. 



