150 PLANTS, SEEDS, AND CURRENTS 



wild specimen of the Calabash tree amongst the vegetation bordering 

 the beaches on the Black River coast may be thus explained, the 

 parent gourd having been brought down by the river. My Jamaican 

 companions at once recognised them as wild, self-sown trees. 



Andira inermis, Kth. (Angeleen tree) 



This tree belongs to a genus of the Leguminosce, comprising about 

 twenty species, all of which are confined to the tropical regions of 

 the New World, with the exception of this species, which, according 

 to Grisebach, Oliver, and others, also occurs in Senegambia on the 

 West Coast of Africa. We learn from Grisebach that the Angeleen 

 tree is distributed over the greater part of the West Indies from 

 Cuba and Jamaica to Trinidad, and that it extends from Mexico 

 along the Spanish Main to Guiana. 



Generally speaking it is a tree of the lower forests, but with a de- 

 cided inclination, determined by the buoyancy of its fruits, to gather 

 at the riverside. This preference for a station along the river banks 

 is remarked by Grisebach for the tree in Jamaica ; and it was in such 

 localities that I observed it in that island. The places in which it 

 was more particularly studied by me in Jamaica were along the 

 banks of the Black River above the mangroves, extending to the 

 foothills of the central range, and in the hilly country at the back 

 of St. Anne's. Its station by the riverside is the only fact connected 

 with its range that can be brought into relation with its occurrence 

 on the West Coast of Africa ; but this does not carry us very far. 

 Although the river could bring the fruits within the influence of the 

 ocean currents, there seems to be but little chance of their ever 

 being stranded on the African coast with their seeds in a germinable 

 condition. Since the genus is American, the New World must 

 have supplied the opposite coast of Africa with this American tree ; 

 and that could only happen now along the circuitous Gulf Stream 

 route. That a pod stranded on the eastern shores of the Atlantic 

 could contain a germinable seed, will appear from the following 

 discussion to be most improbable. 



The fruit is a leguminous, indehiscent, one-seeded pod, about one and 

 a half inches long, ovoid-globose in form, with (in the dry state) a loose- 

 textured, fibro-ligneous husk 2*5 to 3 mm. thick. In the fresh con- 

 dition, when it is moist and semi-fleshy, it has but little buoyancy, 

 either sinking at once or floating only for a day or two; and thus 

 the pods form no feature in the Black River drift, though the tree 

 commonly grows on the banks with its branches overhanging the 

 stream. In the dry state they are evidently much more buoyant; 

 but the indications of my observations are that except in inter- 

 island dispersal in the West Indian region the fruits would rarely 

 contain a germinable seed when distributed by the currents. The 

 stranded pods did not come under my notice in the Jamaican beach- 

 drift ; but I gathered them in small numbers from amongst the foreign 

 drift thrown up on the beaches of different islands of the Turks 

 Group. Such drift fruits sometimes contained a seed; but it was 

 hard, discoloured, and evidently unfit for germination. Since the 



