1922] on Biological Studies in Madeira 567 



I have sent the Sechium far and wide, and I have the satisfaction 

 of knowing that it is now well established as a potent contribution to 

 the general well-being of many of our colonies. 



During the war, when these Southern seaswere infested with German 

 submarine U-boats, which, without discrimination, wantonly destroyed 

 everything, and completely cut off our food supplies, we had to learn 

 the value of our local resources, and to economize them, and it was 

 then that I fully realized the potency of the Sechium substance in 

 promoting the assimilation of fats, whether by saponification or 

 emulsion ; and I saw on several occasions the sullen apathy of incipi- 

 ent starvation awaken into animation under this effective influence. 



A meal lacking in fat is deficient in staying power and output of 

 energy ; and in times of scarcity it is of supreme importance to 

 make the most of what is available. During the digging of the 

 Panama Canal the Italian labourers had to be coerced into consum- 

 ing a full fat ration in order that their daily work should equal the 

 output of their well-fed Canadian associates. 



It has also been my privilege to scatter the seeds of the small 

 cherry tomato, an agreeable vegetable and a potent anti-scorbutic, over 

 many an arid and ill-supplied district ; and I have lately learnt 

 with pleasure of its secure establishment on those desolate remote 

 rocks of the microscopic archipelago of the Salvages which, 150 miles 

 to the south, have a Madeiran ownership. This plant, with its 

 almost leafless, straggling stem, will mat whole valleys with its bril- 

 liant produce. The presence, in the Salvage islets, of the Monizia 

 Edulis, the carrot-fern of Madeira, and unknown elsewhere, as well 

 as a species of the Apterous Deucalion, otherwise only known on the 

 Madeira rocks, side by side with the Canarian Astadamya — a specific 

 samphire — seems to establish a certain correlation or agreement 

 between the botanic and entomological distribution of species in 

 these two island groups. 



Some of our very interesting importations are sterile either under 

 cultivation or in the absence of effective fertilizing agency. Before 

 the year 1870 the garden terraces of Funchal possessed five or six 

 striking examples of the bignoniaceous tree, Jacaranda mimosifolia. 

 These, though abundantly pollenated by bees and humble-bees, were 

 entirely sterile until a newcomer of the same species began to flower 

 and yield its fertile pollen. The prevailing sterility then vanished, 

 all the old trees bore abundant seed-pods, and there is now no garden 

 or public walk which is not adorned copiously by the flowering blue 

 tree which, with the yellow Grevillea and vivid Erythrinas, forms so 

 startling an illustration of the acquired flora of Madeira. 



No variety of fruiting banana has ever seeded in Madeira, though 

 the bees freely visit their apparently perfect flowers, and pass, pollen- 

 laden, from plant to plant. The small shrubby Solatium from 

 Guatemala, fancifully named the melon pear, has likewise lost all 

 fertility, and can be propagated only by cuttings. Here, too, is the 



