CoLGAN — Tropical Drift Seeds on Irish Atlantic Coasts. 33 



indisputably a representation of the Linnean species Giiilandina bondac, the 

 Yellow Mkar of Jamaica. This is the first recorded instance of a tropical 

 drift seed having reached the Irish coast in a germinal condition. Xo 

 particulars are given as to tlie name of Sir Joseph's Irish correspondent, as to 

 the precise part of our west coast on which the seed was stranded, or as to the 

 date of the finding. Brown merely tells us that Banks received the drawing 

 from Ireland " some years ago," that is, some years previous to 1818. 



Seven years later in the second edition of a popular work entitled "Letters 

 from the Irish Highlands of Uunnemara by a JFamily Party ,"^ a gossiping 

 volume in which one would little expect to find precise details, an account of 

 the appearance on the Galway coast of no less than fom' distinct kinds of 

 "Sea Nuts" is given. Jn a copy of these letters in the library of this 

 Academy there is a manuscript note by an anonymous scribe, who, while 

 qualifying the work as contemptible and prejudiced, attributes the authorship 

 to H. Blake, of Eenville, and his family. Internal evidence confirms this 

 attribution. The passage referring to Sea Nuts occurs on page 867, in a letter 

 dated September (1823), and signed " A." The material part runs thus : — 



"Our Sea Nuts are another marine curiosity, having very much the 

 appearance of horse chestnuts, but of various shapes and sizes. They contain 

 a kernel, white .and bitter to the taste ; some are small and round like 

 marbles; others oval with a handsome black or yellow baud round the 

 middle ; others again with an impression like a stamp on one side. On showing 

 some of them to a nursery man near London he pronounced them to be South 

 American, all diadelphous and siliquosus. The largest, a Hymenaea, a forest 

 tree, with the fruit enclosed in pods about two feet long and six or eight 

 inches broad." 



From the context it would appear that these Sea Nuts were found on the 

 beach somewhere between Eynville and the southern shore of the Killery, 

 and the descriptions given are precise enough to make tlie following identifica- 

 tions probable : — Chdlandinct Bonducella, the Grey Nikar- ("small and round 

 like marbles"); Mucuna, sp., the Horse Eye Bean'' of Sloano's "Jamaica" 

 (" oval with a handsome black or yellow baud round the middle ") ; Ijwmoea 

 luherosa (" with an impression like a stamp on one side ") ; and Entada 

 scaiidens (" the largest . . . with the fruit enclosed in pods about two feet 

 long "). The last of these is a woody climber which ascends lofty forest trees,* 



' Longmans, Hurst, Reeves, & Co. London, 1825. 



2 Sloane's Cat. PI. Jamaica, pp. 144-145. 



= Ibid., pp. 68-69. 



* "Plants, Seods, and Curreiita," pp. 140-141. 



