130 PLANTS, SEEDS, AND CURRENTS 



Trinidad, the proportion of sound fruits in the beach-drift is nearly 

 as large. This island is not known to possess the palm, and doubtless 

 its drift fruits are principally derived from Trinidad and the neigh- 

 bouring Venezuelan shores. In both islands we also find old dead 

 drift fruits incrusted with Balani that probably hail from the Amazon. 



Of the Manicaria fruits brought by the currents to the beaches 

 of the Turks Islands not more than 1 or 2 per cent, appeared to be 

 " germinable." Out of some scores observed I only found one or 

 two in their cases, all the rest being bared fruits, and possessing in 

 almost all cases either a mouldy kernel with the embryo more or 

 less removed by decay, or a hard and dry kernel with the embryo 

 greatly shrivelled. The stranded fruits occurred on all the larger 

 islands ; but they diminished in frequency towards the south, being 

 most numerous on Grand Turk in the north, and least common 

 on Greater Sand Cay in the extreme south, where, however, other 

 kinds of foreign drift abound. The indications are that these 

 Manicaria fruits often arrive at the Turk Islands from Hispaniola, 

 eighty or ninety miles to the southward. 



On Grand Cayman, which lies in the track of the Main Equatorial 

 Current between Cuba and the coast of Honduras, quantities of these 

 Manicaria fruits are thrown up. Mr. Savage English in his paper 

 on this island in the Kew Bulletin (1913) remarks that occasionally 

 perfect fruits are found (such as have been already described in a 

 previous page from other localities); but no "sea coco-nut" has 

 ever been known to germinate on Grand Cayman, and " there is not 

 a tree of it on the island." He attributes the loss of the germinative 

 capacity to the long flotation in the sea involved in the transit from 

 Trinidad and South America. In a few cases signs of arrested 

 germination were observed when the fruits were opened. As indicative 

 of the source of these fruits, it is stated that a drifting bottle from 

 off Ceara, to the north-west of Cape St. Roque, was picked up on 

 the Cayman Islands. 



On the whole it may be inferred that the floating fruits of Mani- 

 caria saccifera, as far as the retention of the germinative capacity 

 is concerned, possess, in spite of their great floating powers, but a 

 very limited capacity for distributing the species over wide tracts 

 of ocean, though able to traverse in an effective condition the narrow 

 seas dividing the West Indian islands, straits that rarely exceed 

 sixty miles across and have usually not half that breadth. 



DlOCLEA REFLEX A, Hook. f. 



This leguminous tree-climber, which in many respects, as in its 

 distribution, station, habit, general seed-characters, and dispersal 

 by currents, presents much the same features as Mucuna urens, 

 ranges through the tropics of Asia, Africa, and America. From the 

 data given by various botanical authorities, more especially by 

 Urban, it is highly probable that all the larger West Indian islands, 

 and most of the smaller mountainous islands, possess it. Thus, it 

 is already known from Jamaica, Cuba, Porto Rico, Dominica, St. 

 Vincent, Tobago, Grenada, and Trinidad. But judging from my 



