5^40 KEELING ISLAND. 



mense trees of red and white cedar, and the blue 

 gum-wood of New Holland, in a perfectly sound 

 condition. All the hardy seeds, such as creepers, 

 retain their germinating power, but the softer kinds, 

 among which is the mangostin, are destroyed in 

 the passage. Fishing-canoes, apparently from 

 Java, have at times been washed on shore." It is 

 interesting thus to discover how numerous the seeds 

 are, which, coming from several countries, are drift- 

 ed over the wide ocean. Professor Henslow tells 

 me, he believes that nearly all the j^lants which I 

 brought from these islands are common littoral 

 species in the East Indian Archipelago. From the 

 direction, however, of the winds and currents, it 

 seems scarcely possible that they could have come 

 here in a direct line. If, as suggested with much 

 probability by Mr. Keating, they were first carried 

 towards the coast of New Holland, and thence 

 drifted back together with the productions of that 

 country, the seeds, before germinating, must have 

 travelled between 1800 and 2400 miles. 



Chamisso,* when describing the Radack Archi- 

 pelago, situated in the western part of the Pacific, 

 states that " the sea brings to these islands the seeds 

 and fruits of many trees, most of which have yet 

 not grown here. The greater part of these seeds ap- 

 pear to have not yet lost the capability of growing." 

 It is also said that palms and bamboos from some- 

 where in the torrid zone, and trunks of northern 

 fii'S, are washed on shore : these firs must have 

 come from an immense distance. These facts are 

 highly interesting. It cannot be doubted that if 

 there were land-birds to pick up the seeds when 

 first cast on shore, and a soil better adapted for their 

 growth than the loose blocks of coral, that the most 

 isolated of the lagoon -islands would in time possess 

 a far more abundant Flora than they now have. 



* Kotzebue's First Voyage, vol ui , n. 155. 



