162 PLANTS, SEEDS, AND CURRENTS 



A remarkable feature is that only these abnormal seeds or fruits 

 show capacity for dispersal by currents, the ordinary separate seeds 

 from Jamaican plants exhibiting little or no buoyancy. The current- 

 dispersed seeds, as we learn from Hemsley, are " not uncommonly 

 met with in the drift of the Caribbean Sea, and are sometimes carried 

 far up into the North Atlantic by the Mexican Gulf Stream." How- 

 ever, only two specimens came under my notice on West Indian 

 beaches, one in Jamaica and the other in the Turks Islands. They 

 are represented in the Kew Museum in the Morris collection of 

 Jamaican seed-drift made in 1884 ; but they were not mentioned by 

 Hemsley in his account of the seeds and fruits there contained which 

 is given in his report on the botanical results of the Challenger 

 Expedition (IV., 284, 298, 1885). Some years passed before he 

 identified them as the seeds of Ipomoea tuberosa. 



The botanical name, however, was not known to me until early in 

 1913, when Dr. Rendle very kindly came to my aid and referred me 

 to Mr. Hemsley's identification. Shortly afterwards I saw them 

 under this name in the Kew Museum, a note on the label stating that 

 they are frequently washed up on the coasts of Cuba and South 

 America. The interesting feature in the story of these West Indian 

 drift seeds is their occurrence on European beaches. In 1908 Mr. J. 

 Fox sent one to me from the Shetland coasts, together with seeds 

 of Entada scandens and Mucuna ; and there is one in the Kew 

 Museum which was obtained by Colonel Fielden in the Hebrides in 

 1891. Doubtless these seeds have also been gathered amongst the 

 Atlantic drift on the shores of Scandinavia ; but Sernander makes no 

 allusion to them in his account of the foreign seeds and fruits washed 

 up on those beaches. However, it is possible that some large drift 

 seeds discovered there by Lindman in 1880, which were referred to 

 the Convolvulacece but had otherwise defied determination, may 

 belong to this species. 



It came as a surprise to me, whilst looking up some of the early 

 references to Gulf Stream drift in the British Museum library, that 

 these seeds had long been known to the older botanists and to the 

 early writers on the Orkney Islands. In their nameless condition 

 they were almost forgotten until Hemsley wrote his paper in the 

 .Annals of Botany. The historical side of the subject did not, how- 

 ever, come within the scope of his paper; and this must be my 

 excuse for dealing here with a matter that could have been handled 

 by him in a far more authoritative and complete fashion. The list 

 *of references now given is not at all exhaustive, but it will serve my 

 purpose. 



Clusius, in his Exoticorum Libri (libr. II., cap. xvi., p. 41, fig. 9), 

 published in 1605, described and figured without further comment 

 these fruits amongst some which had been given to him by Jacobus 

 Garetus. C. Bauhin, in his Pinax Theatri Botanici (p. 405), printed 

 in 1623, merely cites the description of Clusius. With the aid of 

 Clusius, Sloane was able to identify the fruit with one of those 

 figured by the Rev. J. Wallace in his book on the Orkney Isles 

 (issued in 1693) amongst other " strange beans " frequently cast 

 up on those islands (Philos. Trans., Vol. XIX., p. 398, 1695-7); 



