46 THE SEYCHELLES - ISLANDS OF THE GIANT PALMS 



man had got a monopoly of the local rice trade, but his customers had 

 decided to grow their own rice and in the rainy climate had been very 

 successful. The trader's simple response to this was to import a few fodies, 

 which battened on the rice and with the help of innumerable progeny 

 made short work of it, forcing the population to buy from the trader as 

 before or go without. The monopoly has long since been abolished but the 

 fodies have remained and have grown accustomed to other food. We suc- 

 ceeded in bringing down a yellow variety, said to be extremely rare. 



On leaving Mahe after these two strenuous days we took with us, as 

 our colleagues of the Dana had done, a male and female of the famous 

 giant tortoises, a gift for the Zoological Gardens in Copenhagen. Their 

 original home is the small island of Aldabra, where, because they are 

 strictly protected, several thousand still survive. A few of them have 

 been introduced into the Seychelles and other islands. Our two magnifi- 

 cent specimens were "folded" on the quarter-deck and transhipped at 

 Colombo, and now live in the best of health in the Copenhagen Zoo. 



It is not only the fauna of the Seychelles but also the flora which is 

 exceptional. There is scarcely another place in the Tropics where palms 

 dominate the vegetations as they do here. All six genera of palms native 

 to the group are endemic and also two species of screw pine, a rela- 

 tion of our reed-mace, are found nowhere else. Palms and screw pines 

 are considered to be the most primitive of all arborescent plants. In 

 most other places palms are outstripped by deciduous trees, and the extra- 

 ordinary abundance of them in the Seychelles, taken together with the 

 great age and isolation of the islands, suggests that they have here found 

 favourable conditions for survival. 



Of none is this more true than of Lodoicea maldivica, the palm which 

 bears the largest fruit in the world, the great, legendary double coconut. 

 The only places where this is found growing wild are in two isolated valleys 

 on the island of Praslin and on an adjacent islet. It would be illogical to 

 suppose that it evolved under the conditions and in the limited area where 

 it now grows. It must be considered a last relic of a period in which its 

 distribution was much wider. 



The only other places where this palm can be found are a few botanical 

 gardens in the Tropics. A single specimen which grew in the Palm House 

 at Kew has died; and though a few nuts were brought home to Copen- 

 hagen by the Dana, all had lost their germinating power on arrival. 



We decided to stop at Praslin and procure a few nuts to take home for 

 a further attempt at germination. 



