WEST INDIAN BEACH -DRIFT 9 



leeward now set their sails to the fair wind and accomplish in a few 

 hours a passage that generally occupies days. At these times the 

 stranding of drift on the eastern sides of the cays is suspended, and 

 the drifting seed is beached on the western shores. This is an example 

 of what must happen over much of the West Indian region when 

 Nature for short periods breaks through her regime and quite different 

 climatic conditions assert themselves. It will thus be understood 

 how time would in the end prevent any marked differentiation in 

 the distribution of littoral plants in the West Indian region. 



For a satisfactory study of the West Indian beach-drift it was neces- 

 sary to find a place where the local flora could be largely excluded 

 as a probable source of materials. In Jamaica, for instance, it was 

 apparent that much of the beach-drift could have been furnished by 

 the plants of the island ; and often the only indications of a foreign 

 origin were the signs of long immersion in the sea afforded by in- 

 crusting Serpulce, Balani, Polyzoa, etc., and by the borings of molluscs. 

 But most of the stranded seeds did not display these evidences of 

 a long ocean journey; and in such cases one could rarely be sure of 

 one's ground. 



This was one of the reasons why I selected the Turks Islands at the 

 south-eastern end of the Bahamas for a more thorough examination 

 of West Indian seed-drift. Almost all of the larger fruits and seeds 

 that are stranded on the eastern beaches of the various islands or 

 cays, making up this little archipelago, belong to plants that are not 

 only absent from this small group, but are not included in the 

 Bahamian flora. The flora of the Turks Islands, which I have dealt 

 with briefly in Chapter XII., is largely littoral in character, almost 

 entirely Bahamian in composition, and as such displays a combined 

 West Indian and Florida fades. 



Author's Indebtedness to Dr. Millspaugh. — Having the good 

 fortune to meet Dr. Millspaugh on Grand Turk, I thus acquired more 

 precise notions of the relation between the stranded drift and the 

 plants of this archipelago. Dr. Millspaugh very kindly lent me the 

 manuscript of the Flora of the Bahamas, by Dr. Britton and himself. 

 From its pages I obtained a general idea of the Bahamian flora, to 

 which the plants of the Turks Islands belong. This generous loan 

 of a work before its publication, a work representing the results of 

 years of exploration and research, was quite spontaneous, and I 

 shall always take a keen pleasure in recalling the circumstance. Its 

 perusal enabled me to approach the subject of the relation between 

 the plants represented in the beach-drift and the plants of the flora 

 of the Turks Islands with far greater confidence than I should have 

 otherwise possessed. 



But in another way the author is deeply indebted to the labours 

 of the American botanists. One of the most methodical examinations 

 hitherto made of the vegetation of the sand-islets of a coral-reef region 

 was carried out in 1904 by Mr. O. E. Lansing in the sand-keys lying 

 to the westward of Key West, Florida. He was commissioned by 

 the Field Columbian Museum of Chicago; and his collections, com- 

 prehensive notes, and maps form the subject of a paper on the 

 Flora of the Sand-Keys of Florida, by Dr. Millspaugh in the publica- 



