134 PLANTS, SEEDS, AND CURRENTS 



amongst the strange constituents of Jamaican beach-drift but in 

 European collections of curious seeds and fruits found on our beaches, 

 it was not until 1889 that the parent plant was discovered. The 

 subject was re-opened when Morris recognised in a drift fruit picked 

 up at Bigbury Bay, South Devon, by Mrs. Hubbard in 1887, the same 

 fruit that he had gathered on Jamaican beaches in 1884. Several 

 botanists aided in the inquiry, Hillier, Oliver, Stapf, Urban and others ; 

 but the source was definitely established when Mr. Hart in 1889 

 sent from Trinidad to Kew some drawings made by Dr. Crueger 

 in 1861, both botanists that in turn filled the position of Superin- 

 tendent of the Botanic Gardens of Trinidad. 



Much of what follows was written before the author became 

 acquainted with the fact that Morris had made a comprehensive 

 investigation of the subject. The present writer had also dug 

 deeply into the older botanical literature ; but here also he has been 

 largely forestalled. Almost all that is of importance to the student 

 of distribution respecting Sacoglottis amazonica was told long ago 

 by Morris. However, as my investigations have been quite indepen- 

 dent, and also because my account helps to fill up some of the gaps 

 in the earlier researches, more especially in the handling of the drift 

 fruits over a large area of the West Indian region, I venture to give 

 my results much as they were written out before the papers of Morris 

 in Nature were consulted. 



It is singular that Mr. Hart first introduced me to the parent 

 plants of these strange drift fruits, with which I had been previously 

 familiar on the beaches of Jamaica and Colon. Within an hour 

 of my landing at Port of Spain in Trinidad, in December 1908, I 

 was in the Botanic Gardens talking to a stranger about my diffi- 

 culties in finding the parent plants of some of the seeds and fruits 

 in West Indian beach-drift. He took me into the Herbarium and 

 showed me some specimens. The stranger was Mr. Hart and the 

 specimens were those of Sacoglottis amazonica. From him I learned 

 that the small tree, to which the fruits belonged, grew in the estuaries 

 of the Orinoco and the Amazon, and that if I wished to see it in its 

 home I ought to visit those regions, since it was very rarely to be 

 found on the swampy coasts of Trinidad. 



These drift fruits are spread far and wide over the West Indian 

 region. I found them on the beaches at Colon, in Jamaica, and on 

 the Turks Islands, Tobago, and Trinidad. There are specimens in 

 the Kew Museum from Barbados, and Morris refers to one found 

 afloat off an island between Grenada and St. Vincent. As before 

 noted they were found by Morris in 1884 on the south coast of Jamaica, 

 and almost two centuries before, 1688-9, they were observed by 

 Sloane during his residence on this island to be frequently cast up 

 on its shores. 



Although, as far as I know, not recorded from any island in the 

 West Indian region except Trinidad, the regular occurrence of its 

 drift fruits on the beaches of the Turks Islands, at the south-eastern 

 end of the Bahamas, renders it highly probable that the plant grows 

 on the large islands to the southward and eastward, such as Porto 

 Rico and San Domingo, since it is from that direction that much of 



