32 PLANTS, SEEDS, AND CURRENTS 



in Note 59 of my work on Plant Dispersal. Mr. Charles Dixon in 

 Ibis (1885) refers to Sir W. Milner's observation in the case of the 

 Fulmar Petrel and speaks of them as Brazilian seeds brought by the 

 Gulf Stream, adding that he himself found a specimen in the crop 

 of one of these birds in the same locality. Sir W. Milner, it appears, 

 procured several of these seeds from the crops of the birds, and 

 Mr. Dixon says that the natives of the island find them at times. 

 The reference by Darwin is made in letters to Hooker in 1859 (Life 

 and Letters, 1888, II., 147-8). He remarks on the curious fact of 

 " petrels at St. Kilda apparently being fed by seeds raised in the 

 West Indies." Unfortunately the seeds were never identified, and 

 more than forty years afterwards, when Mr. Hemsley applied to Sir 

 Joseph Hooker for particulars, too long an interval has elapsed for 

 the determination of this point. The West Indian drift seeds carried 

 to our islands that would be most likely to be swallowed by sea-birds 

 would be those of Guilandina bonducella. When in the Keeling 

 Islands I was informed by residents that the seeds of this plant, 

 which grows on the islands, are sometimes found in the stomachs 

 of sea-birds, such a frigate-birds and boobies. 



Pennant in his Voyage to the Hebrides in 1772 (I., 266) refers to 

 " the nuts commonly called Molucca Beans which are frequently 

 found on the western shores of the Hebrides." He is one of the 

 first to employ the Linnean designations in naming the seeds stranded 

 on the Western Islands of Scotland, and his list comprises Dolichos 

 (Mucuna) urens, Guilandina bonduc, G. bonducella, and Mimosa 

 (Entada) scandens, all, as was long before pointed out by Sloane, 

 natives of Jamaica. He adds C. Bauhin's description, derived 

 from Clusius, of a fifth kind, which is evidently the composite seed 

 of Ipomcea tuberosa, and special reference to it in this connection 

 will be made when dealing with that species. There is in the Kew 

 Museum another drift seed of the same species of Ipomoea from 

 the Hebrides, which was obtained by Colonel Fielden about 1891. 



A well-known Genevese naturalist, Necker de Saussure, made a 

 long sojourn in the Hebrides between 1806 and 1808. Speaking 

 of the " American " seeds, Dolichos (Mucuna) urens and Mimosa 

 (Entada) scandens, which had been thrown up by the waves, he says 

 that when traversing South Uist he observed them in every cottage 

 (Voyage en ticosse et aux lies Hebrides, 1821, III., 22). There are 

 doubtless numerous references in modern works to the West Indian 

 seeds transported to these islands. For instance, Mr. C. V. Peel 

 in his Wild Sport in the Outer Hebrides, 1901, mentions the seeds 

 of the two species just named as occurring with much other Atlantic 

 drift on the west coast of North Uist. 



The Orkney Islands. — These islands are of special interest in 

 the story of this investigation, since the stranded " Molucca Beans " 

 (as they were called), which were figured by the two Wallaces, the 

 early historians of the group, were in most cases identified by Sloane 

 with seeds familiar to him in Jamaica (Phil. Trans. 1695-7). Stand- 

 ing thus on firm ground when he surmised that the seeds had been 

 brought by the sea from the West Indies, Sloane forestalled by 

 quite two generations the Norwegian observers of the middle of 



