PLANTS, SEEDS, AND CURRENTS IN 

 THE WEST INDIES AND AZORES 



CHAPTER I 



WEST INDIAN BEACH-DRIFT 



The study of the stranded seed and fruit-drift of the West Indian 

 region, as in the case of my previous investigations in the Pacific 

 Islands, offered a means of approaching the great problems of plant 

 distribution. The inquiry was extended over four winters (1906- 

 1911), and was principally carried out in Jamaica, the Turks Islands, 

 Trinidad, Tobago, and Grenada. The last winter was spent in the 

 Turks Islands with the object of studying the seed-drift most fitted 

 for the traverse across the North Atlantic in the Gulf Stream, since 

 in those small islands one is able to discriminate with confidence 

 between the drift of local Origin and that brought from outside 

 regions by the currents. 



Generally speaking, the drift has much the same character over 

 all this region, except perhaps in Trinidad and the adjacent island 

 of Tobago, where there is added a quantity of strange seeds and fruits 

 brought by the Equatorial Current from the Amazon and the Orinoco 

 and from the estuaries and shores of the Guianas and Brazil. It 

 is also highly probable, as is shown in the discussion of the bottle- 

 drift data in a later chapter, that West African seed-drift is trans- 

 ported by the same current to the West Indies ; but there are obvious 

 difficulties in the way of recognising it, since most of the littoral 

 plants that constitute the principal sources of the drift are common 

 to both sides of the tropical Atlantic. 



Its Sources. — The seeds and fruits found in the floating drift of 

 these seas are derived partly from plants growing on the beaches, 

 partly from plants of the n angrove swamps, and partly from inland 

 plants growing on river-banks and on the slopes above. They are 

 to be found in quantities on the beaches, especially in the vicinity 

 of estuaries. But the scanty materials stranded on the coasts of 

 Europe, as described in Chapter II., are but the residue of a vast 

 amount of vegetable debris brought down by rivers to the coast 

 and washed off the beaches by the currents. By far the greater 

 mass of these materials must soon find a resting-place amongst the 

 deposits at the bottom of the sea in the vicinity of their source. 



B 



