THE HISTORY OF THE INVESTIGATION 3 



the large, soft, seemingly immature seeds before the drying and 

 shrinking process that ushers in the rest-period begins. 



However, nearly ten years passed by before I saw my way 

 to attacking the problem that first presented itself almost as 

 in a dream during my sojourn in Hawaii. Here again it was 

 from the same plant {Guilandina bonducelhi) that I obtained 

 my clue. Whilst observing in December 1906 this plant in 

 immature fruit on the beach of St Croix (Danish West Indies), 

 it occurred to me that there was at least one indirect way of 

 approaching the problem other than by carrying out an experi- 

 ment more visionary than practicable in its nature. So I 

 placed a number of the soft unripe seeds in wet sand, believing 

 that under such moist conditions they would not go through 

 the usual shrinking and hardening process. The experiment 

 was completed at Black River, Jamaica ; and after five weeks 

 I found that the seeds had retained their original size and 

 consistence. The shrinking process had thus been deferred ; 

 whilst in the case of seeds gathered at the same time and 

 allowed to dry in the air the seed had been reduced by shrink- 

 ing to about a third of its original weight. 



Just at this time, whilst studying the floating seed-drift of 

 the Black River, I noticed that the shrinking process was con- 

 sistently shirked by some of the river-side plants, the seeds. The mdica- 

 after falling into the water, rapidly passing on into the germin- seTd-driftln'^ 

 ating state whilst still afloat. They were not viviparous plants, Jamaica, 

 but possessed seeds with soft coverings which would not pro- 

 tect the embryo against injurious desiccation, the result being 

 that unless the fallen seed found itself in moist conditions and 

 germinated quickly, its chance of reproducing the plant was 

 gone. Perhaps the most interesting of these plants were 

 Crudya spicata and Moronobea coccinea, the one leguminous, 

 the other guttiferous. The first is known as the Kakoon 

 (Cacoon) tree, from the resemblance of its seeds to those of 

 Entada scandens^ a plant bearing the same name. The second 

 is the Hog-gum tree. 



It was, however, an observation on the seeds of Abrus 



