58 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. VIII. 
124. WPisonia alba Spanoghe i Linnea, xv, 342; Hook. f., Flor. 
Brit. Ind., iv, 711. 
Bitrapar ; Fleming ! 
A littoral species confined, if Spanoghe’s species be really distinct from all the 
Polynesian and Malayan ones, to the Andamans and Nicobars. ‘The species is 
rare in the Andamans beach forests (Kurz), but it is plentiful on the shores of 
Narcondam and on those of Batti Malv—one of the Nicobar group. The tree 
is only known in India and Ceylon as acultivated species; but as it does 
not occur on any of the other islands of the group, and as Bitrapar is an 
uninhabited island, the presence of the species in the sea-coast jungle here must be: 
independent of human interference. Its fruits may have been introduced by 
birds, since the glutinous lines along their angles admirably adapt them for this 
mode of dispersal ; but as the majority of the birds that visit Bitra must be 
sea-fowl, it is much more likely that the species has been introduced by means of 
ocean-currents. ‘Though not wild, it is frequently cultivated in Ceylon (¢.9., ab 
Colombo) near the sea—indeed away from the sea it refuses to grow—and, if the 
tree does not exist in Malaya, Ceylon, cultivated trees may be supposed to have 
yielded the fruits that have reached the Laccadives. One point, however, against. 
the species being confined, as an indigenous tree, to the Andamans is that the 
species has been long cultivated in India and Ceylon, and. it is therefore extremely 
unlikely that the plants originally introduced into India. came from that group: 
of islands, with which, save for a short period in the end of the last century, there 
was, till thirty years ago, practically no communication. It appears, indeed, as 
Sir Joseph Hooker suggests, to be little more than a form of the Polynesian 
Pisonia inermis Forst. 
AMARANTACE. 
125. Amerantus viridis Linn., Sp. Pl. (ed. 1), 1405 ; Roxb., Flor. 
Tnd., ii, 605; Hook. f., Flor. Brit. Ind., iv, 720. 
Minikoi ; Fleming ! 
A weed of waste places, cosmopolitan in the tropics. 
126. Zrua lanata Juss. i Ann. Mus. xi, 131; Hook. f., Flor: 
Brit. Ind., iv, 728. Achyranthes lanata Linn, Sp. Pl. 204; Roxb., Flor. 
Ind., i, 676. 
Bitrapar; Hume! Kalpéni; Alcock / Kadamum ; very common, Meming £ 
Akati ; Fleming / Minikoi ; common, Yleming ! 
A weed. of waste places and also, as here, a common littoral species throughout 
tropical and subtropical Africa, the Mascarene Islands, Arabia and South-Hastern 
Asia ; here almost without doubt a sea-introduced species, 
127. fchyranthes aspera Linn: Hook. f., Flor. Brit, Ind., iv, 730. 
var. typica. Achyranthes aspera Linn., Sp. Pl, 204; Roxb., Flor. 
Ind.,; 1, 672, 
