APPENDIX 579 



remarks, concerning its station, that it frequents the wooded slopes of the 

 valleys of the interior. In North Keeling Island C. obtusifolia presented 

 itself to me not only as a beach-creeper, its usual habit, but as a climber 

 over the branches of the coast trees. In one locality in Vanua Levu 

 I found a variety of this species growing on a hill a mile inland and about 

 700 feet above the sea. On one of the beaches it approached C. sericea in 

 some of its characters, as in the form of the calyx and in the hairiness. 



Although the seeds of C. obtusifolia have long been known to be 

 dispersed by the currents, having been found in Moseley's collections of 

 floating drift off the New Guinea coast {£ot. Chall. Exp., IV, 291), they 

 displayed remarkable fickleness when experimented on by me in Fiji. As 

 a rule, however, about 10 per cent, sank at once in sea-water, 50 per cent, 

 floated after three weeks, and 10 per cent, after twelve weeks. Of seeds 

 that had been kept three years, 50 per cent, floated after eleven weeks. 

 The seeds are to be found in numbers amongst the stranded drift of 

 the Fijian and Ecuador beaches, and I noticed them also afloat in the 

 Rewa estuary of Fiji. 



I tested the floating-power of the seeds of C. sericea in Fiji, and 

 found that half of them remained afloat after sixty days. On the seeds 

 of C. ensiformis I have not experimented; but their buoyancy is indi- 

 cated by the frequent occurrence of the plant on the Solomon Island 

 coral islets (Guppy's Solomon Islands, pp. 290, 292, 296), and probably the 

 Canavalia seeds identified at Kew from my drift collections on these islets 

 belong to this species. Schimper (p. 166) refers to the seeds of a Cana- 

 valia in Java that were still afloat after ten weeks. These littoral plants 

 are indebted for the floating capacity of the seed to the buoyant kernel. 



NOTE 55 (page 42 and Note 20) 



The Inland Extension of Sc^evola Kcenigii 



Scaevola sericea (Forst.), a hairy variety of this littoral plant, will 

 probably prove in some localities to be the inland form of the species. 

 Dr. Reinecke, who mentions only this variety for Samoa, says that it 

 is found in very moist ground in river-ravines, and no other station 

 is referred to. It would seem that both the glabrous and hairy forms 

 occur in Hawaii. Dr. Seemann speaks of the hairy variety as littoral 

 in Fiji. 



NOTE 56 (page 149) 



On the Capacitv for Dispersal by Currents of Sophora tomen- 

 tosa, s. chrysophylla, and s. tetraptera 



(i) Sophora tomentosa, Linn. — The moniliform pods will float for 

 few weeks, but it is to the seeds liberated by the breaking down of 



P P 2 



