Chap. I] 



WATER 



29 



Gulf Stream from the West Indies. More recently the great importance of 

 marine currents in introducing plants to coasts and islands was proved 

 by investigations relating to the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and carried on 

 by Hemsley, Treub, Guppy, and myself. I wrote on the spot the following 

 description of the appearance of fruits and 

 seeds thrown up by the sea at Tjilatjap, in 

 South Java : — 



1 The broad sandy shore is quite free from vegeta- 

 tion and nearly bare. Except for a few fruits recently 

 thrown up by the surf, together with shells and frag- 

 ments of pumice coining from the eruption of Krakatoa, 

 it is strewn only with the fruits of Spinifex squarrosus, 

 which are either bounding and rolling along urged by 

 the wind, or lie shortly clipped and half-buried in the 

 sand. Behind the shore, some low dunes stand up 

 sharply, and are overgrown with bluish Spinifex. At 

 the foot of these dunes lies the marine drift, carried 

 thither by the wind or by high tides, in the form of 

 long sharply-defined strips, resembling heaps of dung, 

 on which many seeds have germinated. The drift 

 consists chiefly of brown herbaceous or woody frag- 

 ments of various species, which, excepting the Spini- 

 fex, are difficult to identify, of pieces of pumice, coral, 

 shells, and finally of fruits and seeds, which, wherever 



the drift-heaps are specially thick, have partly begun to germinate and cover them 

 with a fresh green verdure. Many of those fruits and seeds come from plants that 

 one might look for in vain in the neighbourhood ; some, at any rate, must have come 

 from the neighbouring island of Noesa Kambangan, but I cannot decide whence 

 the others have come. 



' Many of the fruits look nearly as fresh as if they had just 

 fallen from the tree, for instance those of Barringtonia 

 speciosa. Others bear traces of a long journey, and have 

 been rubbed nearly out of all recognition ; their husks are 

 covered with Serpicula, or perforated like a sieve, or inhabited 

 by a colony of Cirripedes ; many, such as Carapa and Cocos, 

 have been hollowed out by animals. 



' The most numerous of all these fruits are those of Heritiera 

 littoralis, and they are very conspicuous on account of their 

 great size. Abundant likewise are the large fruits of Cerbera 

 Odollam, quite stripped of their green husks and partially of 

 their parenchyma, and displaying the bared tough fibrous 



coat surrounding the endocarp (here forming the floating tissue) which is almost 

 water-tight. Further arresting the attention are coconuts covered only with the 

 remains of their fibrous husks, and usually with one side perforated by a round hole 

 through which some unknown creature has eaten its fill of the seed that has almost 



Fig. 34. Terminalia Catappa. 

 Drift-fruit. Natural size. 



Fjg. 35- Calophyl- 

 lum Inophyllum. Stone 

 of fruit opened and 

 exhibiting the floating 

 tissue. Natural size. 



