CoLGAN — Tropical Drift Seeds ow Irish Atlantic Coasts. 39 



the virtues of EntacLa, it is placed by Daleclianip in 158? aiiionyst the Fahax 

 ■purgntriccs, and Ipomoca tuberosa appears in Oviedo in 1526' under the Spanish 

 name Avellana pur[/aiiva. 



We may then assume the presence on board ships trading between the 

 Western Tropics and the British Isles of at least four of the Irish drift seeds, 

 and an occasional wreck amongst such vessels off our Atlantic coasts might 

 account for the stranding of these seeds on some of the beaches from Donegal 

 to Kerry. Such a view as this has been suggested or expressed, not merely 

 by ignorant cavillers, but by men of science. Thus Lobel in 1570 considered 

 the stranding of foreign beans on the Cornish coast as all the more wonder- 

 ful because no shipwreck was knbwn to have occurred on the spot. Again, 

 John Ray, the father of English botany, whose fame is perpetuated by the 

 well-known Eay Society, when written to by Hans Sloane in 1696 for his 

 opinion as to the origin of the Scottish drift seeds then engaging Sloane's 

 attention, replied: — "It is very unlikely to me that they should be brought 

 so far by any current of the sea. I should rather think they came from 

 vessels cast away by shipwreck near these parts." ^ John Flygare, a pupil of 

 Linnaeus, in a paper on Plant Colonies, read at Upsala in 1765, discussing 

 Gunner's account, published in the same year,^ of the stranding of American 

 seeds on the Norwegian coast, says that no one yet knows how tliese seeds 

 are carried by the ocean and stranded with vitality so unimpaired that they 

 grow when sown.^ Three years later Henry Tonning, another pupil of 

 Linnaeus, in a paper on Norwegian Earities, read at Upsala, makes a further 

 reference to Gunner's drift seeds. These, be says, reach Norway either by 

 the ocean, which offers a way of transport from America, or sometimes, 

 though more rarely, by shipwreck. He proposed to the whole learned world 

 (a ioto literato orhe) the problem of how these seeds, indigenous in South 

 America, could be carried by sea to Norway, since they do not float. " They 

 are so recent that they grow when planted, yet come in plenty year after 

 year." (Cum nan natent, cum aclco rcccntia sint ut gcrmincnt, et quotannis adve- 

 niant?) The problem, as so stated, is indeed fit to battle the whole learned 

 world. But Tonning was wrong in his premises; for most of Gunner's 

 seeds do float. 



Thomas Pennant, the acute author of " British Zoology," may be taken as 



^ " De la Natural Hyatoria do las Iiulias." Toledo, 1526. 



° "Correspondence of John Ray." Ray Society, 1818, pp. 306-7. 



^ Trondhjemske Selskabs Skviftcn, vol. iii, 17<).">. 



"* OceauMs mmhi nuiidiim r.uiijtiam coijnUn soiiiiui (Jassiac Pislulae, Anacardi occidetitalis 

 MimosoescaiifUnleset Cocos uuciferae adlittura usqui: Norveiiuix votvit, caijue, qnudviirtiifrh, 

 adeo cegeta «< lerrae maiidata ijerminent (tc crescant. "Amoeuit. Acadom.," Tom. ii, 

 supp. cli. 



