Cor.GAN — Tropical Drift Seeds on Irish Atlantic Coasts. 45 



(■nn.sfciuil ouiToiits of tlio Main vvitli the wafting of these beans on places that 

 lie so fai- out of the road of any of llu^ direct Tydes. And if tliey grow only 

 aJiout the Molucco Isles, nr in no iilaee on this side of the Equator, it would 

 seem more probable that thoy uaiiio by the Northern i)assage than in any 

 other way. And their freshness in the kernel seems rather to have been 

 kept in the cokl conservatory than in the warm batlis of the other progress." 



It will be seen that the idea of a northern, tliat is to say, a north-easfc 

 passage, from the East Indies was suggested to Mackenzie by the name 

 Molucco Beans nsed in the Hebrides, and obviously indicating a belief that 

 the beans had originated in the Moluccos. Sloaue, in his "Voyage to 

 Jamaica," 1725 (vol. ii, p. 41), erroneously inverts the mental process wheu 

 he says that the seeds " are called Molucean Eeans by the inhabitants [of 

 N.W. Scotland], they snpposing them to have come from these islands by an 

 inniginary north-east passage." That rumours of the discovery of a north- 

 east passage to the East Indies were current long before tlie date of 

 Mackenzie's paper is shown by a Spanish report brought to Lisbon from 

 England in 1587 by Francis de Valverde, of San Lucar, while the Armada 

 was being fitted out. This report, as published by the Spanish author Dure 

 in his excellent work on the Armada, shows that A''alverde, who had been 

 captured off Cape St. Vincent, on board of a ship homeward bound from 

 New Spain, and kept prisoner many months in England, advised his Govern- 

 ment that it was quite openly said in England that they (the English) had 

 discovered a navigable way to the Moluccos round by the North, and that 

 this would be most inconvenient for the service of His Majesty (Philip II).i 

 How the seeds came to get the name Molucco Beans is a mystery which 

 even Dr. Guppy's erudition has failed to unravel. I can only make the 

 suggestion that the Portuguese name, Fava de Malaffiia, Malacca Bean, 

 applied to the kidney-shaped nut or seed of Anacardinm, which, in form and 

 colour, as described by the old herbalists, resembles the Entada Bean, was 

 somehow transferred to the latter, and then by an easy corruption changed 

 to Mohicco Bean. This Portuguese name for Auacardiuni is given in 

 Dalechamp's " Historia Generalis Plantarum " of 1587, and re-appears in 

 1640 in a much better known work, " Theatrum Botaniciuu," in the section 



■ ' " La Armadii Invenciblo," 1S84-S.5, vol. ii, p. 512. Documentos no. 86 — "Queen 

 InglateiTa se decia mui publicamente que habian desoubierto la navegacion de las 

 AFoluccas por detras del Norte, y qiLB siendo asi es de gran inconveniente para servicio 

 de S.M." This long-desired passage, so ice-bound as to be useless for trade purposes, 

 was not finally accomplished until 1879, when Nordeuskiold's famous Swedish circum- 

 navigation of Europe and Asia was eft'ected in the ship Vega. See Vega's Fiird Kring 

 Asien och Europa. Stockholm, 1880-81. 



R.I, A. PKOC, VOL. XXSV, SEAT. B. [ff] 



