146 



COETIVY. 



This island lies a little to the south of Seychelles, and was 

 visited by the Sealark Expedition. We are indebted to 

 Professor Gardiner for ihe following notes from the second part 

 of his Description of the Voyage. Coetivy is described as about 

 six miles long by one-and-a-half across its broadest part. 



" The character of the vegetation was the same as that which 

 we found in the Chagos Archipelago on similar dry, sandy and 

 tuff islands. It consists of low bush, formed mainly of Scaevola 

 and Erythroxylon, the former with thick succulent stems and 

 leaves like the laurel, and the latter with tiny leaves, yellow 

 flowers, and stems covered with mossy lichens. The ground 

 between was mainly covered with isolated plants of a low rush 

 (sedge ?), while struggling clumps of the hairy-leaved Tourne- 

 fortia and of the thinner-leaved Pisonia we found here and 

 there. Probably there were not 20 species of plants altogether 

 on this kind of land, but the lower patches yielded a more con- 

 siderable variety of species. These, when compared, proved to 



ame 



This was to us a source of considerable astonishment, because, 



om 



mi 



places from the more 



more 



expected to find a considerably greater variety of plants. 

 Actually, we catalogued 92 species as against 85 in the He du 

 Coin Peros, Chagos ; the increase being mainly due to rather 



plants of cultivation. The only new group of trees were 

 the vacoa (Pandanus), of which, though formerly very widely 

 spread, there were left only two clumps. The badamier, Ter- 

 minalia Catappa, was certainly indigenous, whereas it has 

 possibly been introduced into Chagos. Finally the gayac 

 (Afzelia) was the only absentee that our lists show among the 

 indigenous trees of the Chagos." 



I have not seen the plants collected by Dr. Simpson in Coetivy. 

 The cases of Afzelia and Pandanus are interestii 

 assume that these trees have disappeared from some of the 

 islands under consideration here. * 



r~ 



Herbarium 



Agalega. 



There is a report by G. Lincoln on the coco-nut industry of 

 Agalega, but it contains no botany. 



Neso genes prostrata is only known from the Agalega Islands. 

 There are several specimens in the Kew ~~ 

 all collected by Bouton. 



Baker records the following plants from Agalega, all or 

 nearly all collected by Bojer: — Afzelia bijuga, Radamaea 

 prostrata (Neso genes prostrata, Hemsl.), Pisonia macrophylla, 

 Pipturus argenteus, Disperis tripetaloides (Orchidaceae), and 

 Stenotaphrum subulatum. Noteworthy among these plants ar<' 

 Afzelia, Nesogenes and Pipturus argenteus which Baker sug- 

 gests may be "a mere variety of P. incanus" a species of 

 Seychelles, Malaya and Polynesia. The orchid is the only one 

 recorded from these islands outside of Aldabra. 











