WEST INDIAN DRIFT ON EUROPEAN SHORES 21 



his Geschichte des Golfstroms, Bremen, 1868, also deals with some 

 of the earlier references. 



Amongst those who have specially dealt with the botanical side 

 of the subject in recent years are Hemsley, Lindman, and Sernander. 

 The two last named were exclusively concerned with the drift of 

 the Scandinavian beaches, and their results are given by Sernander 

 in his work on the " distribution-biology " of the Scandinavian 

 plant- world (Upsala, 1901). The first named reopened the whole 

 inquiry in his botanical contribution to the reports of the Challenger 

 Expedition, and in its pages largely guided the investigations of 

 later students like myself. But it would be unjust if one did not 

 refer to one of the old veterans who did so much to establish clear 

 conceptions concerning the nature and source of the foreign seed- 

 drift on our European coasts. In the foremost place comes Sir 

 Hans Sloane, who from experience derived from a sojourn of fifteen 

 months in Jamaica, 1688-9, was enabled to identify the names and 

 determine the origin of several of the strange seeds and fruits stranded 

 on the Irish and Scottish coasts and on the islands to the north, 

 his results being given in the Philosophical Transactions for 1695-7, 

 and in the account of the natural history of Jamaica, which occupies 

 most of his work on the West Indies. He naturally came to the 

 conclusion that these West Indian seeds had been brought by the 

 " Currents and Seas." 



The early Scandinavian References.- — It is interesting to 

 notice how in Scandinavia the crude surmises of the early writers 

 on the natural history of these regions gave place to the more accurate 

 determinations of the Linnean school of botanists. In the first 

 place stands Peter Claussen (Peder Clausson), the Norse writer, who 

 in his Description of Norway published in 1632, nine years after his 

 death, refers to the seeds of Entada scandens as " stones floated 

 on to the coast," both in Scandinavia and the Faroe Islands. 

 Claussen was merely reiterating the old Norse belief, which found 

 expression in such names as " adder-stones," " eagle-stones," etc., 

 that were applied to these drift seeds, a matter mentioned again in 

 a later page of this chapter. One of the earliest to perceive their 

 real nature was Olaus Worm, a Danish naturalist of the seventeenth 

 century, whose Epistolce are quoted by Gumprecht (p. 420). He 

 determined them to be leguminous, and referred them to two genera 

 of Indian beans. Amongst the first to recognise their place of origin 

 was Provost Lucas Jacobsen Debes, who in his Faeroa Reserata or 

 Faeroe Revealed, published at Copenhagen in 1673, stated his opinion 

 that the seeds came from the West Indies and were " brought hither 

 by the Stream." This early reference to the Gulf Stream striking 

 the north-west shores of Europe may merit the attention of the 

 geographical student. 



But the popular notion as to their inorganic origin long survived, 

 and it succumbed only to give place to another erroneous idea that 

 they were the product of marine plant-like organisms, such as the 

 " alcyonarian sea-shrubs." Thus Pontoppidan, the famous Bishop 

 of Bergen, in his book on the Natural History of Norway, which was 

 issued at Copenhagen in 1751, gave the name of Faha marina, or Sea 



