204 NATURAL SCIENCE. Sept.. 



of the Amazon as far north as Nicaragua. Several of the tropical 

 Asiatic genera, like Areca, run down through New Guinea into 

 Australia. Others are extremely local. Lord Howe's Island has, 

 for instance, two peculiar genera. Jiiania is found only on the small 

 island of Juan Fernandez, while the small group of the Seychelles, in 

 the Indian Ocean, boasts no less than five endemic genera. One of 

 these, Lodoicea, bears the fruits known as the double coco-nut, or 

 coco de mer. The great woody nuts were found floating in the sea 

 long before the discovery of the tree which produced them or the 

 islands on which it grew, and many absurd stories of their origin 

 were in vogue among the earlier navigators. 



Of somewhat restricted distribution, as well as of doubtful relation- 

 ship, is the Nipa palm. Only one species is known, Nipa fvuticans, 

 which frequents the brackish estuaries and littoral marshes of tropical 

 Asia from Ceylon to the mouth of the Ganges, through the Malayan 

 Archipelago to the Philippine Islands, New Guinea, and tropical 

 Australia. It is of dwarf habit, having a long, thick horizontal root- 

 stock which sends roots into the ground and bears, at the apex, a 

 number of long deeply-cut pinnate leaves. The male and female 

 flowers are borne separately on a spadix or long fleshy stalk 

 springing from among the leaves. The male are thickly crowded on 

 catkin-like branches, the female borne in a rounded head terminating 

 the spadix. The head of ripe fruits is as large or larger than 

 that of a man. The individual fruits vary somewhat in size and 

 shape, according to their position in the head, but are all more or less 

 inversely egg-shaped, the upper-third projectmg and rounded with 

 generally an apical umbo, the lower portion pressed on all sides by 

 neighbouring fruits and more or less angular, showing four to six 

 obtuse angles. The coat is of a deep brown colour and polished, 

 while the substance is thick and fleshy but densely fibrous. It 

 contains a single seed with a small basal embryo and a quantity of 

 cartilaginous albumen, which, however, is edible before the seed is 

 quite ripe. The seed is said to germinate wathin the fruit, which 

 remains on the spadix for several years, by which time the embryo has 

 so far advanced in growth as to be unaffected by salt water. I 

 think, however, that this statement requires confirmation. The fruit 

 finally drops into the brackish water or mud and the seedling may 

 grow where it falls, or float some distance. Great numbers of the 

 fruits are often found floating in the river estuaries. Sir Joseph 

 Hooker, in his delightful " Himalayan Journals," refers to the 

 frequency with which they were tossed up by the paddles of his 

 steamer in the Sunderbunds. 



In the "Philosophical Transactions" of the Royal Society for 1757, 

 Dr. James Parsons gave an account of some fossil fruits and other 

 bodies found in the London Clay, in the island of Sheppey, by Edward 

 Jacob, a surgeon of Faversham, who also subsequently pubHshed an 

 account of them as an appendix to his " Plantae Favershamienses " 



