E. W. Berry — Fossil Sea Bean from Venezuela. 311 



was not collected and I assume it carried the face of the 

 test and the small fragment of the upper cotyledon which 

 is missing. 



I have dissected a number of seeds of the existing 

 Entada scandens and their correspondence with the fossil 

 is most remarkable, the only difference being the partially 

 developed plumule or hypocotyl in the fossil which as I 

 have suggested above was probably due to germination. 

 The cotyledons appear to have become infiltered with fer- 

 ruginous salts before they had time to rot and were sub- 

 sequently slightly flattened by pressure causing the escape 

 of gas from the central intercotyledonary cavity on which 

 the buoyancy of the seed normally depends. 



Fig. 1. — Fossil Entada from the Tertiary of Venezuela. 



There are not many plants growing in the American 

 tropics that have the distinction of having their seeds 

 used as snuff or tinder boxes by the natives of northwest- 

 ern Europe. The seeds of the snuff box, sea hesm(Entada 

 scandens) are mentioned in Norse literature as early as 

 1632 as of inorganic origin and were often considered to 

 have been formed by the waves and called solvent stones, 

 the name indicative of some imaginary virtue. In both 

 Norway and the Faroe Islands they were called Vette 

 Nyre which Sterpin (1676) translates as Fairies or Magic 

 Kidneys. It is therefore not a matter of surprise that 

 they were used as charms. Molucca beans, as they were 

 also called, were and probably still are, among the fisher 

 folk of the Shetland and Orkney islands, considered an 



