BOTANY OF THE LACCADIVES. 75 
here, as elsewhere, the species is one that readily becomes established as a 
weed. 
Cosmopolitan in the tropics. 
176. Thuarea sarmentosa Pers., Synops., i, 110. 
Bangaro ; Hume! Kadamum ; Fleming! Minikoi ; Fleming ! 
A littoral species, extending from the shores of Polynesia to Malaya, the 
Andamans and Nicobars, Ceylon (Thwaites 0. P. 2260), the Laccadives, and the 
Mascarene Islands. As with a number of other littoral species exhibiting the 
same distribution, this has not yet been collected on the coast of the Indian 
mainland. 
177. Spinifex squarrosus Linn., Mantiss., 300. 
Bitrapar ; everywhere in huge patches inside the belt of Zpomea biloba, 
Hume ! Minikoi ; Fleming ! 
A littoral species found on the Western Indian Coast from Canara (Thomson) 
to Malabar (Aheede) and on the east from Puri (Clarke) and Gopalpur (Prain) to 
Madras (Wight) and Ceylon (Thwaites). Besides extending to the Laccadives, it 
occurs in Java (Kurz), Siam (Schomburgk), and China (Hance). But in the 
Calcutta Herbarium there are no specimens from Burma, the Malay Peninsula, 
the Andamans or the Nicobars. The headquarters of the genus is Australia, 
where several species occur; and if this species has originally come from the 
south-east to India, it has apparently only reached the western, not the eastern, 
side of the Sea of Bengal, first perhaps reaching Ceylon, whence it has crept 
northward along both the coasts of the Indian Peninsula. Why it should not 
have become dispersed northward from Java, along the coasts of Sumatra, the 
Nicobars and Andamans to Burma, it is difficult to conceive. 
178. Oryza sativa Linn., Sp. Pl, 833; Roxb., Flor. Ind., ii, 200 ; 
Watt, Dict., v, 498. The Rice crop. 
Anderut ; a small quantity of rice is grown in the rainy season, not more 
than 15 or 20 days’ consumption, Wood. 
Generally cultivated throughout the tropics ; probably originally a native of 
India, where it often occurs, as Roxburgh says he has himself seen it in the 
Circars, in a truly wild state, that is, mot as an escape from cultivation. It 
occurs thus, for example, in the Sunderbuns along with another species (Oryza 
coarctata Roxb., Flor. Ind., ii, 206), which is perfectly distinct from O. sativa 
in any of its forms, is never found anywhere else than in the Sunderbuns, and 
of which no use whatever is made. 
The notice by Lieut, Wood is the only intimation of the Laccadive islanders 
cultivating the rice crop ; but though they do not apparently attempt to grow 
it now, there is no reason to suppose that Wood was misinformed or mistaken. 
For though Robinson does not mention rice as a crop in 1844-45—it will be 
