FOREIGN DRIFT OF THE TURKS ISLANDS 137 



have long been known as constituents of the West Indian drift 

 brought by the Gulf Stream to the shores of Europe. Although 

 the parent plant was not known to him, he was able to compare 

 its fruit with the accounts given by Petiver and others. " This is 

 frequently cast up " (thus Sloane writes) " on the shores of this island 

 (Jamaica) by the waves, and is one of those fruits thrown on the north- 

 west islands of Scotland by the seas." He quotes the description 

 given in a work thus designated — J. B. Cat. Jam., p. 214, " Fructus 

 exoticus cinereus, cum lineis et tuberculis duris." He also gives 

 Petiver' s description of his drawing of the fruit in his Gazophylacium 

 Naturae (tab. 71, p. 5), " Fructus Jam. ovalis foraminosus," and the 

 same author's account of " a hard oval fruit, with seed-holes round 

 its surface, found on the shores of Jamaica," etc. Petiver' s figure 

 and description, which I found in the 1764 edition of his book (plate 

 71, p. 7), leave no doubt as to the identity of the fruit mentioned 

 by Sloane as commonly stranded on the north-west islands of Scot- 

 land. Probably these fruits were often figured in the works of 

 the early botanists. Thus one is figured and well described by 

 Clusius (Exot. Libr., libr. II., cap. 19, p. 45 ; 1605) as sent to him by 

 Jacobus Plateau, but nothing more is said of its source. 



In the remarks just made I have briefly given the results of my 

 examination of the older literature relating to the strange drift 

 fruits of Sacoglottis amazonica, both on West Indian and European 

 beaches. Since they were written, I have enjoyed the privilege 

 of reading the papers of Sir D. Morris, who, with the assistance of 

 Mr. E. G. Baker, made a more extensive inquiry in this direction, 

 though I am not clear whether either of them noticed Sloane' s re- 

 cognition of these fruits as thrown up on the north-west islands of 

 Scotland. My references to the older literature may now be supple- 

 mented from these sources. The description and figure given by 

 Clusius in his work of 1605 were reproduced by J. Bauhin in 1680 

 in his Historia Plantarum (torn, i., libr. 3, cap. cxi., fig. 1). One of 

 the earlier allusions to this drift fruit is that of Johannes Jonston, 

 who described it in his Historia Naturalis de Arboribus et Fructibus 

 (p. 102), a work published in 1662. It was mentioned by Sloane 

 as early as 1696 in his Catalogus Plantarum (p. 214) ; and here one 

 may find an explanation of a reference of his in the preceding para- 

 graph, J. B. apparently indicating J. Bauhin. Its discovery by Mr. 

 E. G. Baker in the Sloane Collection in the British Museum, under 

 label No. 1656, was of much assistance to Sir D. Morris in clearing 

 up the mystery surrounding the origin of these drift fruits. 



