THE SEYCHELLES — 

 ISLANDS OF THE GIANT PALMS 



By ToRBEN Wolff 



Scattered about the world are islands, or groups of islands, which occupy 

 a special place in natural science owing to their distinctive fauna and 

 flora. 



One such group is the Seychelles, situated in the Indian Ocean just 

 south of the Equator and a little over i,ooo kilometres north-east of Ma- 

 dagascar. It consists of close on 30 large and small islands which lie on 

 a broad coral-crowned bank several hundred kilometres in length. They 

 are separated by channels between 50 and 100 metres deep and are 

 mostly of granite formation. Their total area is 264 square kilometres. 



It was the Portuguese who discovered the islands and they called 

 them the "Seven Sisters". But they were colonized from the middle 

 of the eighteenth century onwards by the French, and renamed lies 

 Sechelles after a French Minister of Finance of the period. The "y" 



