1893.] D. Pram — Flora of Narcondam and Barren Island. 41 



that portion of it close to the Irrawaday Delta is spoken of as the Gulf 

 or Bay of Martabau ; it has, however, sometimes been spoken of as the 

 Gulf of Pegu, and more recently bas received the much more appropriate 

 name of the Andaman Sea.* 



* Alcock : Annals and Magazine of Natural History, ser. vi., iv., 378. The 

 degree of confusion in nomenclature that prevails is sufficiently exemplified in the 

 various Atlases of recent date. Keith-Johnstone's " Royal Atlas " — an excellent 

 example of an English Atlas — shows, on the same sheet (India, southern sheet) 

 in the general map, the Bay of Bengal and the Sea of Bengal limited as they are in 

 the text, though the Bay is called the " Gulf " of Bengal : in the small map of the 

 South-Eastern provinces placed on the same sheet this " Gulf " is called, as is more 

 usual, the Bay. No name is given to the Andaman Sea, though the Gulf of 

 Martaban is distinguished. In Stieler's Hand- Atlas — an excellent example of a 

 German Atlas — we find (Sheet 67, by Berghaus) the phrase " Meerbusen von Pegu " 

 used as the precise equivalent of Alcock's later-published but perferable name of 

 "Andaman Sea;" the Gulf of Martaban of the English maps is designated, much 

 more correctly than in English maps, " Bai von Martaban." So much confusion 

 of names and their incidence, renders it necessary to insist on some definite system 

 of nomenclature, with a rigid definition of the areas to which the names apply. 



It would seem therefore that German geographers are prepared to admit the 

 distinctness of the Andaman Sea as a geographical area, while to modern English 

 geographers the necessity for considering the question has apparently not occurred. 

 If, however, at present they refuse to recognise this as a truly land-locked area 

 deserving of a specific designation, the following passage from a letter dated 

 Calcutta, the 4th March 1795, from Major A. Kyd to Sir John Shore, then Governor- 

 General, will show that even a hundred years ago those who knew the area best 

 realised its true nature. Kyd says : — The Andaman Islands, " comprehending what 

 "are called the Great and Little Andamans, extending from N. Lat. 18°31' 

 "southward, and lying nearly in a N. and S. direction between 92° and 93° E. of 

 " Greenwich, are part of a continued range of islands extending from Cape Negrais 

 " to Acheen Head, including the Preparis, Cocos, Car Nicobar, and the Great and 

 " Little Nicobars, the whole being a chain of islands between which there is reason 

 " to believe that there is a continuation of soundings, entirely dividing the eastern 

 " part of the Bay of Bengal." Kyd was Superintendent of the second, or Port 

 Cornwallis settlement in the Andamans, instituted in 1792, when the settlement, 

 under Blair at Old Harbour, now Port Blair, begun in 1789, was abandoned. 



As an example of the usage which terms the whole sea-area between India 

 and Indo-China the " Bay of Bengal," may be mentioned a paper by Hume (Stray 

 Feathers, vol. ii.) wherein these two islands, along with Preparis, the Cocos, and 

 of course the Andamans and the Nicobars, are termed the Islands in the Bay of 

 Bengal, as opposed to Ceylon, on the one hand, and the Mergui Archipelago, on the 

 other. This is also the usage of the Admiralty Maps of the region, and though 

 it is certainly indefensible on hydrographical grounds, since the area to the east of 

 the Andaman-Nicobar chain fulfils in every particular — far more so than the Sea of 

 Bengal itself — the conditions laid down in the definition of a " Sea," it is prefer- 

 able to the slip-shod system that distinguishes the Bay of Bengal from the Sea of 

 Bengal, without distinguishing between the Sea of Bengal and the Andaman Sea. 



