CHAPTER II 



WEST INDIAN DRIFT ON EUROPEAN SHORES 



In order to give point and method to my numerous 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, I will at first let the discussion centre around 

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



The Literature of the Subject. — Although it is not possible 

 for me to deal exhaustively with the numerous references to the 

 occurrence of West Indian seeds and fruits on the coasts of Europe 

 which have been made since De FEscluse, " better known under the 

 Latinised appellation of Clusius," first figured some of them, in ignor- 

 ance of their origin, in his Exoticorum Libri in 1605, the history of the 

 subject will be found treated with some detail in this chapter. Those 

 curious in the matter will find an excellent general account of our 

 knowledge up to the middle of last century in Dr. Gumprecht's 

 Die Treibproducte der Stromungen in Nordatlantischen Ocean (1854). 

 His object was to sum up the evidence supplied by the variety of 

 natural products from tropical regions thrown up on the north-west 

 coasts of Europe in favour of the extension of the Gulf Stream into 

 high northern latitudes, a theory that had been vigorously opposed 

 by Rennell and others. It is difficult for us to realise that such a 

 necessity ever existed. Yet it did ; and one result was the publica- 

 tion of this paper in the Zeitschrift fur Allgemeine Erdkunde on the 

 drift-materials transported by the North Atlantic currents, in which 

 almost all the facts then known were gathered together and discussed 

 with the usual German acumen and thoroughness. 



The subject of the West Indian drift on European beaches was 

 dealt with by numerous writers during the last century in their 

 treatment of the currents of the North Atlantic. Amongst them may 

 be mentioned Humboldt in his Voyage aux regions equinoxiales, 

 Paris, 1807, etc. ; Sartorius von Waltershausen in his Physisch- 

 geographische Skizze von Island, 1847 ; Schjoth in his work on different 

 marine phenomena (Om enkelte af Havets Phdnomene, Christiania, 

 1848) ; Irminger in his paper on the ocean currents (Zeitsch. fur 

 Allgem. Erdk. 1854) ; Fogh in a paper on the Gulf Stream in Tidds- 

 skrift for populcere Fremstillinger af Naturvidenskaben, Copenhagen, 

 1857, where he gives a sketch of the history of our acquaintance 

 with the subject ; Vibe, chief of the Norwegian General Staff Survey, 

 in his Kusten und Meer Norwegens, published in a supplementary 

 volume of Petermann's Mittheilungen (1859-61); and Kohl, who in 



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