272 D. Prain — A List of Diamond Island Plants. [No. 4j 



The island is said never to have been occupied by the Burmese, and 

 lias evidently been originally densely wooded. 



The greater part of it is indeed densely wooded still, but a corner 

 has been completely cleared between tbe watercourse tbat has been 

 converted into a tank and the watercourse that passes soutb. On the 

 cleared high ground between these two streams stands a telegraph office 

 with a house for the telegraph-master attached ; a little way off are 

 servants' quarters. The clearing has been extended across this latter 

 stream for a short distance, so as to provide a site for a shelter-hut for 

 Bassein pilots while they await vessels bound for that port. Between 

 the tank-bund and the sea, but nearer to the tank and close to its over- 

 flow, stand two Burmese huts occupied by collectors of turtles' eggs ; 

 between these huts and the beach is situated a small European grave- 

 yard. At the outlet of the other streamlet and opposite tbe safest 

 lauding place is a boat shed ; from this point eastward for about 400 

 yards — along the sea-view of the telegraph-office, in fact — the jungle 

 lias been cleared away down to the beach. Everywhere else tbe jungle 

 along the sea-face of the island remains intact. A plantain garden and 

 a paddock of considerable size have been cleared on the central plateau 

 behind the telegraph-office ; elsewhere the jungle remains untouched ; 

 altogether between two-thirds and three-fourths of the suifaceof the island 

 has not been interfered with. The beach itself consists of deep soft sand 

 in wbich the streamlets disappear before they reach the sea ; at low tide, 

 however, long reefs, extending south and west of the island proper for half 

 a mile or more, are laid bare. On the east side, where the telegraph cable 

 lands, no reefs appear ; at the north-west corner they do, but only ex- 

 tend seaward for 50 or 60 yards. The reefs consist of the same sand- 

 stone that forms the Arracan Yomah and that appears again first in the 

 Andaman, and afterwards in the Nicobar group of islands; they are 

 altogether without coral. 



The reefs and pools between them are remarkably destitute of 

 marine vegetation, Padina pavonia and Caulerpa clavifera being the 

 principal species, and both being in very small quantity. Not only are 

 there very few growing Algae, but very few are washed ashore ; these 

 consist chiefly of a small green Sargasso,. Tbe absence of the submarine 

 meadows of marine Hydrocliaridw, so characteristic of the otherwise 

 similar pools among the coral-encrusted reefs of the Great Coco, is very 

 striking. There is no mangrove belt on any part of the shore, unless it 

 be considered as represented by some small patches of Avicennia offici- 

 nalis on the reefs about 30 paces from the beach ; the individual plants 

 send their roots along the seams between the layers of sandstone for 

 considerable distances, and these give off rootlets that rise vertically 



