i8o A NATURALIST IN THE PACIFIC chap. 



well as by the results obtained by Lindman, who procured the 

 germination of the seeds of this plant and of Mucuna urens that 

 had been washed up on the Scandinavian beaches (see Sernander, 



PP- 7, 390). 



One of the most interesting references to the conveyance by 

 currents of these seeds to the coasts of Europe is to be found 

 in Dr. Sernander's recent work on the modes of dispersal of 

 the Scandinavian flora, where he sums up the results of Lindman 's 

 investigations respecting the Gulf Stream drift. The stranded 

 seeds of Entada scandens, it appears, have been found all along the 

 Norwegian coast, but occur most frequently north of the Sondmore 

 district. They have even been found in a sub-fossil condition in 

 the peat-bogs of Tjorn on the Bohuslan coast in Sweden, having 

 been originally stranded on a beach in that locality at some 

 distant, but post-glacial, epoch. Few phenomena in plant-distribu- 

 tion are more suggestive than this ineffectual transport through the 

 ages of these large tropical beans to coasts within the Arctic 

 Circle. The seed, no longer under the care of the mother-plant, 

 becomes a waif, exposed to the pitiless laws of the physical world 

 which here prevail. It was not thus that the plant was reared, but 

 it is in this haphazard fashion that its seeds are spread. The 

 philosopher could unravel most of the tangled problems connected 

 with present and past plant-dispersal, if he could follow the clue 

 supplied by this stranded tropical seed on a Scandinavian 

 beach. 



It is a far jump from the North Cape to the coral islands of the 

 Pacific and Indian Oceans ; yet it is within the area covered by the 

 drifting Entada bean. The stranded seeds occur commonly on the 

 Fijian beaches and on other islands of the South Pacific ; but 

 I never found them in Hawaii. They were gathered by me on the 

 shores of Keeling Atoll in the Indian Ocean, and on the south 

 coast of Java. Penzig found on the Krakatoa beaches, in i8gy, 

 not only the stranded seed but the established plant. They came 

 under my notice in numbers on the beaches of Ecuador and on the 

 Pacific and Atlantic coasts of the Panama Isthmus ; and, as I 

 learned, they are equally common on the other parts of the coasts 

 of Central America. Not uncommonly these stranded seeds in 

 various parts of the world are to be found incrusted with 

 polyzoa and tubicular annelids, which afford proof of prolonged 

 flotation in the sea. These seeds are also to be frequently noticed 

 floating in the drift of the tropical estuaries. Thus they came 

 under my observ^ation afloat in numbers in the Fijian estuaries, in 



