444 



crests on the labellum, 2 confluent ; such a view is quite rec-oncilable 

 with tlie one saying that there are 3 crest*, the latter with two teeth 

 at the back. 



GaSTRODIA MALAYAN a, Eidl. 



Gastrodia malayana, — an interesting leafless orchid has been 

 found newly in Penang by Mr. Mohamed Haniff in a specimen 3^ 

 inches high. Such a height is far in excess of what it is known tO' 

 reach in Singapore and neighbouring part-s of the State of Johor. 



I. H. BURKILL. 



NOTES. 



A POSSIBLE ANCIENT MIGRATION OE USEFUL PLANTS WESTWARD 



IN Asia. 



In a very interesting account of '' The origin and ethnological 

 significance of Indian boat designs " {Memoirs Asiatic Soc. Bengal^ 

 VII. 1920, p. 139-256) Mr. James Howell suggests that a boat-using 

 community once occupied the coasts of Southern India which was of 

 iSTegrito stock, and this was followed by a proto-Polynesian stock, 

 and then by the Malaysian wave which reached Madagascar. Tvater 

 tlie Dravidians came into Southern India and Ceylon from the Medi- 

 terranean by land, and completely absorbed the sea-going people 

 whom they found already there. 



These suggestions are worth remembering in connection with 

 i:he migration of useful plants: the coconut for instance may have 

 reached India by the agency of the second stock. 



Under-sea Meadows. 



Professor W. A. Herdman's remarks in the Journal of the 

 Linnean Society of London, Zoology, XXXlV, 1920, pp. 256-258,. 

 upon tlie great economic value of the seaweed meadows of the Irish 

 Sea are most interesting. Firstly he touches upon the zone of the 

 Bro\ni Seaweeds, concluding " that a very large amount of organic 

 food must be present " in it, and " it is not surprising that shoals of 

 young fish are found feeding there." In the second place he turns 

 to the green Grass Wrack {Z oster a marina) which lives on muddy 

 sand up to high water mark. The Zostera bed, says Professor Herd- 

 man, is an important source of food to fishes and invertebrate ani- 

 mals, "its waving forest, clothed with many other organisms, large 



and small, is one of the densest masses of living plant food in 



the sea, both directly from the food that it furnishes to the animals 

 living in it, and indirectly from the enormous quantities of Diatoms 

 which cover its decaying leaves." 



In the seas of Malaya the brown seaweeds are unimportant: but 

 not so the undersea meadows of the tropical Grass-wrack, Enhalus, 



