FOREIGN DRIFT OF THE TURKS ISLANDS 115 



the same popular name, and possesses, according to the inhabitants, 

 the same dangerous qualities. The absence from the Turks Islands 

 of the true Manchineel could scarcely be attributed to its extermina- 

 tion by the islanders in the isolated uninhabited cays. Although it 

 grows in Key West, off the Florida coast (Pax), we learn from Dr. 

 Millspaugh's paper before quoted that it was not discovered by 

 Mr. Lansing during his methodical examination of all the sand keys 

 lying west of that island. The vegetation there is mainly littoral, 

 and in many islets it is exclusively so. Several of the keys are little 

 more than sandbanks, and the question of extermination by man 

 could not be raised. It would thus appear that although, as shown 

 below, the fruits of the Manchineel must be amongst the drift first 

 stranded on new land in this part of the world, the tree is one of the 

 last to establish itself. I never remember to have come upon a 

 germinating fruit in the beach-drift of any locality, although examina- 

 tion always showed that some of the seeds were sound. It may be 

 that the intervention of certain land crabs is necessary, and that 

 germination only occurs after the fruit has been stored in their burrows 

 beyond the reach of the sea. Sloane, in the account of his voyage to 

 Jamaica (II., pp. 4, 7), throws some light on this point. He says that 

 goats feed on the fallen fruit greedily, and he was shown trees that 

 had grown from seeds dropped in their dung. 



I come now to discuss more in detail the fitness of these fruits 

 for dispersal by the currents. (I may add here that the fruits are 

 illustrated in the memoir of Pax before named.) On account of 

 the station of the tree by the beach, the fallen fruits, as I had several 

 opportunities of observing, are liable to be picked up by the waves 

 and carried out to sea. Should the fresh fruit, which is rather like 

 a crab-apple in size and appearance, fall at once into the water, 

 experiments show that it will remain afloat. But more often it loses 

 its soft outer covering whilst lying on the sandy soil ; and in so doing 

 its buoyant capacity is greatly increased. The bared fruit gathered 

 after drying on the ground consists of a hard " stone " deeply grooved 

 and covered with a thick layer of cork-like, air-bearing tissue. Neither 

 the "stones" nor the seeds inside have floating power, the buoy- 

 ancy being due to the investing material. These dry, bared fruits 

 evidently can float for many months. Some of them kept in sea- 

 water for five weeks showed no signs of sinking, all of them floating 

 as buoyantly as when the experiment began. The stone usually 

 has about six loculi, but not more than half contain sound seeds, 

 the others being much contracted in size. Locked up within the 

 woody endocarp, the oily seeds maintain a moist condition for years. 

 After eight years, the seeds of some fruits gathered by me at Panama 

 seemed quite fresh; whilst the fruits of the Turks Islands beach 

 drift, which may in some cases have been lying there for years, as 

 a rule appeared sound. 



It is, therefore, not surprising that the stranded fruits of the 

 Manchineel came under my notice in nearly every place where the 

 beach drift was systematically examined. At Panama, in Jamaica, 

 St. Croix, Tobago, Grenada, Trinidad, and in the Turks Islands these 

 fruits formed a regular constituent of the drift, and often in numbers. 



