374 D. Praia — The Vegetation of the Coco Group. [No. 4, 



proper, there is one place where Gasiiarina equisetifoUa occurs. This 

 is a small bay, Casuarina Bay, on the west coast of North Andanaan, 

 on the beach of which the species is plentiful. In the Coco group, where 

 there are Coco-nut trees, there is no Casuarina equisetifoUa though it 

 occurs again in Arracan and Chittagong where there are no Coco-nuts. 

 As a matter of fact there is a steady current northward along the west 

 coast of the Andamans for a considerable period of the year and it is dif- 

 ficult to understand why both Cocos and Casuarina do not occur plenti- 

 fully along the whole west coast of the Andaman chain. The writer's 

 examination of the ocean- drifts of the Coco group during his two visits 

 did not throw much light on the subject. Wreckage in considerable 

 quantity is to be found along the whole of the coasts, in most cases, how- 

 ever, belonging to wrecks that have occurred on the spot ; the disposi- 

 tion of the fragments therefore only throws light on the "set" of local 

 currents. Among the exceptions to this were a dressed teak-log on the 

 east side of Great Coco, a padouk-log on the east side of Jerry Island, a 

 quantity of Burmese sea-fishing-gear on the eyot between Great Coco 

 and Jerry, fragments of two different Audamanese canoes on the east 

 coast of Great Coco, a clump with roots of a very large Bamboo (not 

 improbably Bamhusa gigantea) on the west side of Great Coco, part of a 

 third Andamanese canoe on the east side of the Little Coco, and a fruit, 

 with part of stalk, of Nipa friiticans at the south end of Little Coco. 

 Except the Andamanese canoes the whole of these objects indicated a 

 " set " of ocean-current from Burma, for though Nipa fruticans which, 

 strangely, appears to be absent from the Cocos, is both a Burmese and 

 an Andamans species, this particular fruit had its stalk cut cleanly off 

 by some sharp implement, and if it came from the Andamans it must 

 therefore have floated from the neighbourhood of the settlement at Port 

 Blair, a sufficiently improbable circumstance, as the examination of a 

 map of the Andaman sea will show. Now if the set of the currents is 

 such as to bring " drift " from Burma, and if these currents have 

 brought the Coco-nut tree originally to the islands, we must explain how 

 it happens that the islands of the " Archipelago " near port Blair, on the 

 shores of which an undoubtedly Burmese " drift ", in the shape of teak- 

 logs, etc., is very plentiful, do not have Coco-nut trees on all their 

 coasts. It has been suggested that the ocean-currents have thrown 

 up Coco-nuts on the shores of the Andamans as well as on those of the 

 Cocos, but that owing to the presence of the aboriginal inhabitants, 

 always on the outlook for what they may pick up on the shore, the 

 establishment of the species in the larger group has been impossible 

 because any nut thrown up is found by them and immediately eaten or 

 destroyed. This suggestion the writer owes to Mr. M. V. Portman of 



