32 Proceedings of the Itoyal Irish Academy. 



match-boxes wliich one occasionally meets with in the shops of curio 

 dealers.^ 



Tweuty-one years later Doctor, afterwards Sir Hans, Sloane, famous as the 

 founder of the lUitisli Museum, iniblished in the 'Thilosopliieal Transactions " 

 for September:, 1696, a paper entitled " An Account of Four Sorts of Strange 

 Beans frequently cast on Slioar on the Orkney Isles, with some conjectures 

 about the way of their being brought tliitlier from Jamaica, where three sorts 

 of them grow." lu this well-known paper, usually tlic earliest to be quoted 

 in connexion with this subject, we have the first positive identification of the 

 Molocco IJeans and the first mention of their discovery on the Irish coast. 

 Sloane, who, in common with later writers, appears to have overlooked the 

 earlier references of Lobel and Sir George Mackenzie, is the first to identify 

 these beans, liaving recognized them as belonging to species growing in 

 Jamaica, wliere he had gathered them wiiile preparing his Catalogue of 

 Jamaica Plants, tlien just published.* Amongst the three beans identified 

 was the large chestnut-coloured seed of Enlaila scmuhn.i, the " Cocoon " of 

 Jamaica. Of the Eut-ada bean Sloane says : — " This, I am told, is cast uj) on 

 the coast of Kerry in Ireland." He gives no authority for this statement, 

 and I can only throw out the suggestion that his informant may have been 

 Dr. Vaughan, of Kilkenny, who about this time was in correspondence witii 

 John llay on the subject of Dillisk-ealing in Ireland, and in this connexion 

 refers to the use of the seaweed in Kerry.' 



About thirty ycai-s later Sloane in the second volume of his " Natural 

 Historj' of Jamaica," published in 1725, records the appearance on the Iri.'ih 

 coast of the seeds of aiioihcr tropical species, Ouilandina Bond%uxlla, the Grey 

 Nickar of Jamaica. These, he tells us (page 41), "are often cast ashore by 

 the sea on the north-west coast of Ireland and Scotland." 



Tlie next reference to tropical drift seeds on the Irish coast, which occurs 

 nearly a cent my later, is from the pen of the famous Kobert Brown — 

 Botanicorum facile princrps, as he has been styled by Humboldt. In a footnote 

 to page 168 of his Appendix to Tuckey's Congo Expedition,* published in 

 1818, Brown tells us that Sir Jo.seph Banks had identified a drawing of a 

 plant grown from a seed found stranded on the west coast of Ireland as being 



' I luve seen one of these match-boxes mounted in chased silver in a bric-a-brac shop 

 in Nassau Street, Dublin. It was made, not from a drift seed, but from an Entada bean 

 brought home frr>m the East Indies by a military man. N. C. 



' " Catalogus Plantarum rjuao in Insula Jamaica 8|Kinte provcniunt aut vulgo colun- 

 tur." London, lfi96. 



' " Correspondence of .John Ray." Ray Society, 1848, p. 305. 



• '* Miscellaneous Botanical Works," vol. i. Ray Society, 18t>0. 



