1891.] D. FrsLin— The Vegetation of the Coco Group. ' 373 



The Coco-nut tree deserves to be specially noticed. It is not 

 known where Gocos nucifera is *' indigenous " and the suggestion that it 

 is " really wild " on the Coco Islands and along the north-western coast 

 of North Andaman, made by the late Mr. Kurz, {Forest Flora of British 

 Burma ii, 540), though true enough so far as the Coco Islands are con- 

 cerned, is denied, as regards North Andaman, by those officers at Port 

 Blair who have had opportunities of investigating the shores of the group. 

 Mr. Kurz did not himself visit either the Coco group or North Andaman, 

 and unfortunately he does not give any authority for the latter part of 

 his statement. But, granting its correctness, the fact remains that about 

 Port Blair the tree only occurs as a recent introduction and it is not 

 met with elsewhere either in South on Middle Andaman, except as a few 

 young trees that have, on Rutland Island, the Sentinels, etc., been deli- 

 berately planted. More recently the writer has been told of a bay in 

 one of the islands of the "Archipelago," near Port Blair, which is lined 

 with Coco-nut trees, the result of the wreck of a particular craft that was 

 lost on her way from the Nicobars to a Burmese port ; this statement 

 the writer has not yet been able personally to verify. In Narcondam 

 there are Coco-nut trees in no fewer than three places, and as there is 

 absolutely nothing to disturb them there, they are spreading rapidly. In 

 Barren Island also there is one bay where a considerable number 

 of Coco-nut trees grow and where also the species is rapidly spread- 

 ing. But in both these islands the introduction has been deliberate 

 and quite recent ; this in Narcondam is particularly evident from the 

 fact that the oldest trees occur along with a grove of Plantains, though it 

 is equally apparent that the spread of the species to one, and probably 

 to both, of the two other bays where it occurs, has been unassisted by man 

 and is due to fallen nuts having been dinfted round from the first plant- 

 ed trees. It is, however, very remarkable that Gocos nucifera should be 

 so abundant in the Coco group and be absent from, or very I'are in, the 

 Andamans proper, including Little Andaman, and that the species should 

 again occur in such abundance in the Nicobars. The direction of the 

 ocean currents has been suggested as possibly explaining the fact, but 

 with very unsatisfactory results, because, whatever be the theoretical 

 direction assumed for these currents in order to explain the distribution 

 of Gocos nucifera, it must fail to coincide with the direction postulated 

 to explain the distribution of Gasuarina equisetifolia, a tree which is 

 extremely common in the Nicobars and is so plentiful in Little 

 Andaman, where there are no Coco-nuts, that the English equivalent 

 for the Andamanese name of the island is " Casuarina-sand," the name 

 taking its origin from the great prevalence of this species on all its 

 beaches. But though there are no Coco-nut trees in the Andaman group 



