THE LACCADIVES AND THE WEST COAST. 433 
plants, after they have done flowering. A large Sedge 
(Cyperus sp.*) grew here and there in profusion, and masses of 
a beautiful white moon creeper (Calonyction comospermum 
Bojer) were in places densely draped over clumps of the large 
bushes already mentioned, converting them into an impenetra- 
ble thicket. Everywhere the shore Quassia (Suriana maritima, 
L.) coramon on all tropical coasts, a stunted woody shrub, with 
multitudes of tiny leaves, occupied the external and most 
exposed positions. 
The only other plants on the island were a sort of Dandelion 
(Microrhynchus sarmentosus, D. C.) a miserable Everlasting 
(Achyranthes bidentata, Blume) infamous for the reckless 
prodigality with which it expends its seeds on all passing legs, 
another covered with a little white woolly caterpillar-like 
infloresence (Aerva lanata, Juss,) and a_ tropically universally 
diffused Nyctago ( Boerhavia diffusa, L.). 
This completes the scanty flora of the island, all plants of 
the commonest description and the widest distribution. 
But if the plants were few and uninteresting, birds were even 
scarcer. We remained two days at the place, circumnavigated 
the lagoon inside and outside without seeing anything on or 
near the reef, except a few Turnstones, a blue Reef Heron (D. 
gularis), one common sandpiper (Tringoides hypoleucos). On 
the island we shot a pair of common Kestrels, four Turnstones, 
two Sanderlings (Calidris arenaria), an Asiatic Golden Plover 
(C. fulvus,) and a Whimbrel. I also saw a pair of thick billed 
Sandpipers (7. crassirostris), but missed them as they rose. 
Lastly, I saw and carefully spared a pair of Southern Wood owls, 
(Bulaca indranee) (though one of them sat blinking and winking 
at me in an exasperating fashion for several minutes) ; but there- 
by hangs a tale. 
I must explain that in some of the inhabited islands the 
people are much troubled with rats (Idus rufescens, as I found 
on securing specimens), which live up in the crowns of the 
cocoanut palms, and incontinently drop the nuts on the heads 
of passers by, and otherwise seriously diminish the outturn 
of the trees and make themselves generally disagreeable. Our 
beneficent Government, anxious to succour its suffering people, 
first suggested cats, but the people already had cats, which, 
however, getting plenty of fish below, felt no call for running 
up 90 feet of bare cocoanut trunk in quest of rats, which 
they never saw or even smelt. Then Government sent down a 
lot of snakes and mongooses ; the former, the people exterminated 
* Dr. Hooker writes that this is not new, but only a robust state of Cyperus 
arenarius, Retz, 
