570 A NATURALIST IN THE PACIFIC 



speaks of the closed air-containing cavities in the seed-vessels, or rather 

 " stones," of this genus as probably giving them buoyancy and thus 

 enabling them to be dispersed by currents. He points out that the fleshy 

 covering of these fruits would also aid their dispersal by birds. The 

 Italian botanist implies that the two Bornean species grow in swamps. The 

 Fijian species, as observed by me in flower in Vanua Levu, grew in the 

 dry talasinga districts bordering the Mathuata coast, the locality where 

 Seemann found the plant. One of the most recent accounts of the genus 

 is given by Van Tieghem in his memoir on the Ochnacese in Ann. des. Sri. 

 Nat. Bot., tome 16, 1902. According to him there are nine species, all from 

 Malaya and New Guinea, with the exception of one in Fiji. Previous 

 authors have also referred to Queensland and Zanzibar species. However, 

 all the species have a limited distribution, a fact which plainly assigns to 

 birds the principal share in the dispersal of the genus. 



NOTE 47 (page 125) 

 ON THE TRANSPORT OF GOURDS BY CURRENTS 



Small calabashes or bottle-gourds are not uncommonly to be found 

 floating in the Fijian estuaries and stranded on the beaches ; and I have 

 also found them in the sea off the coasts. They are usually more or less 

 globular, 3 or 4 inches across, and are evidently able to float for very long 

 periods and to carry the seeds unharmed. Most of those I examined from 

 the drift were dry inside and contained the seeds dried together into a 

 loose ball about an inch in size. The seeds are not those figured in 

 Gaertner's De Fructibus et Seminibus^ as belonging to Lagenaria vulgaris, 

 and more resemble those of Cucurbita, but are non-buoyant. One of these 

 gourds, picked up by me in the sea in Fiji, was placed in sea-water, and 

 two months later was still floating buoyantly. After being then kept dry 

 for seven months, it was broken open ; and ten of the seeds were put in 

 soil, two of them germinating in a few days. 



In Ecuador gourds similar in size and shape were frequently observed 

 by me floating in the drift of the Guayaquil River and stranded on the sea- 

 beaches. The seeds are similarly caked together in a loose mass in the 

 cavity of the fruit. Their characters indicate that they belong to another 

 species of gourd; and they differ also from the Fijian seeds in their 

 buoyancy, some of them in my experiments floating two months and after- 

 wards germinating. 



It has been known since the days of Strom and Gunnerus, two Nor- 

 wegian naturalists of the 1 7th century, that gourds and calabashes are from 

 time to time stranded with other Gulf-stream drift on the coasts of Norway. 

 We learn from Sernander that those found are usually worked calabashes ; 

 but he alludes to one that was unworked and contained several seeds (see 

 Sernander, p. 119). 



