342 Dr. E. P. Wright on Lodoicea sechellarum. 
the palm. This M. de Quincy was the last administrator of 
the king of France. He was then named military commandant 
and civil agent for the French republic; and having in May 
1794 surrendered to the summons of Capt. Newcome, of H.M. 
frigate ‘Orpheus,’ he was appointed acting commissioner to 
the English government, which position he occupied at his 
death. He is buried on the summit of a little knoll not ten 
minutes’ walk from Government House; and by his tomb, of 
white coral, the English flag is hoisted on all holidays and 
féte-days throughout the year. 
Some few years more elapsed until Mr. Telfair, a gentleman 
well known in connexion with the botany of the Mauritius, 
obtained specimens of the male and female fruit, and forwarded 
them to Sir W.J. Hooker, then Regius Professor of Botany in 
the University of Glasgow, whose account, in the first volume 
of the new series of Curtis’s ‘ Botanical Magazine’ (1827), 
leaves very little indeed to be added to the general description 
of the palm (plates 2734-2738). 
Since then, Dr. Barnard and my friend Mr. Swinburn 
ae have published contributions to the history of the 
alm. 
We landed on the eastern side of Praslin; and while the 
seine-net was being dragged to provide us with some fish for 
breakfast, I walked to the place where I had seen the Lodoitcea. 
Passing along by the sea-side, I found the sandy beach strewed 
with innumerable flowers of Barringtonia ?; fringing the 
sea, and in many places growing in it, was a species of Sce- 
vola. The double-cocoanut trees were all male plants; the 
ground at their feet was covered with the remains of the long 
catkins, crumbling into dust when touched. The trees ap- 
peared to grow almost out of the rock, and the little earth seen 
near the roots was a tenacious yellow clay. Two, and some- 
times three, leaves hung suspended from the stem. In the dis- 
tance, along the coast and up the mountains’ side, 1 saw other 
specimens; but they were but thinly scattered along this 
eastern side of Praslin. I had, however, other and better op- 
portunities of seeing and examining much finer specimens 
than are to be met with on this side of Praslin, and I hope, in 
a small work which I am at present engaged in writing, to 
give an account at some length of the Lodotcea, and to accom- 
pany the chapter on this subject with a figure thereof from a 
photograph, and with illustrations of the ripe nut and sections 
of the stems of both young and old trees. In these notes I 
purpose only to give, as briefly as possible, an account of the 
Lodoicea-torests of Praslin and Curieuse, to state the facts that 
I have collected that bear on the question of the age of the 
