WEST INDIAN DRIFT ON EUROPEAN SHORES 41 



(Edinb. 1701, p. 174 of the 1883 edition). It appears that a specimen, 

 only about a foot in length, was " found alive upon the sand in an 

 ebb " in the parish of Northmevan on the shore of Urie Firth. The 

 occurrence is characterised as a very rare event. From the remarks 

 of Mr. Peel and Mr. Brand it would seem that the turtles stranded 

 on the coasts of the Hebrides and the Shetlands are usually young 

 specimens. Turtles are often carried north from the Florida 

 Straits by the Gulf Stream. On one occasion the writer was on 

 board a steamer, bound north from the Bahamas to Philadelphia, 

 which, shortly after passing the Hatteras Lightship in 36° N. lat., 

 nearly ran down a large turtle. It raised its head as if in astonish- 

 ment, and as it swept past the ship's side it was noticed that numerous 

 large Balani had established themselves on its back. 



It may be here added that in the London Times for June 19, 

 1916, allusion is made to a large turtle, weighing nearly a ton, which 

 was taken alive a few days previously in a net off Scilly. In the 

 same net was captured a thresher-shark, nearly 12 feet in length, a 

 species frequenting the seas of temperate latitudes. The turtle, if of 

 West Indian origin, should have been accompanied by seed-drift 

 from that region ; but the writer has not since found any drift from 

 warm seas on the South Devon coast. (September 9, 1916. The 

 turtle proved to be the Leathery Turtle which breeds in the Danish 

 West Indies.) 



Summary 



1. In order to give point and method to the author's observations 

 on the dispersal of plants by currents in the West Indian region, 

 as illustrated by the examination of the beach-drift and by various 

 buoyancy experiments, the discussion is at first allowed to centre 

 around the fact that some of the materials reach the shores of Europe. 



2. The literature of the subject goes back to the time of Clusius, 

 who first figured some of the fruits and seeds in his Exoticorum 

 Libri of 1605. Amongst those who interested themselves in the 

 matter, down to the close of the eighteenth century, were Peter 

 Claussen, the Norse writer (1632); Provost Debes in the case of the 

 Faroe Islands (1673) ; Petiver, the laborious compiler of the Gazo- 

 phylacium Naturce (1695); Sir Hans Sloane (1695-7); the two 

 Wallaces in the case of the Orkney Islands (1693 and 1700); Martin 

 in that of the Hebrides (1703) ; Pontoppidan, Bishop of Bergen (1751) ; 

 Gunnerus, Bishop of Trondhjem (1765); Strom, the Norwegian 

 naturalist (1766); Tonning, the pupil of Linnaeus (1768), and 

 Pennant in the case of the Hebrides (1790). Amongst the numerous 

 writers of the nineteenth century who have treated the subject in 

 more or less detail are Humboldt (1807) ; Necker de Saussure, who 

 sojourned in the Hebrides between 1806 and 1808; Sartorius von 

 Waltershausen in the case of Iceland (1847); Irminger, famous 

 for his investigations of the currents of the North Atlantic (1854); 

 Gumprecht, whose paper on the drift-products of the North Atlantic 

 (1854) is invaluable to all students of the subject ; Fogh in his paper 

 on the Gulf Stream (Copenhagen, 1857) ; Vibe, chief of the Norwegian 



