240 PLANTS, SEEDS, AND CURRENTS 



even on such isolated groups as the Cayman Islands and the Alacran 

 Shoals (Millspaugh). It is also a Bermudian plant. On the American 

 mainland it is found on the coasts of South Florida and on the shores 

 of the Gulf of Mexico. I have no record of its occurrence on the 

 Pacific coasts of that continent, but it ought to grow there. 



There are, however, some curious gaps in the distribution of a 

 plant that Nature evidently intended to be universal on tropical 

 shores. For instance, its distribution in the Pacific is freak-like. 

 It has been recorded from Tonga, but not from Fiji or Samoa. Yet 

 it occurs in the Melanesian archipelagoes of the Western Pacific. 

 Though found in the Tahitian Group and in the Paumotu Islands, 

 it has not been observed in Hawaii. We have here, it would seem, 

 an outcast in the plant world, friendless, without kith or kin, and 

 claimed by nobody, since botanists are undecided in what order to 

 place it. It would be futile to seek for its home. It is probably 

 coeval with man in the tropics, and he has evidently been its greatest 

 foe. 



Its suitability for firewood no doubt explains its otherwise unac- 

 countable absence from some of the Pacific archipelagoes. One 

 of the first things a Pacific islander does, when he lands on an unin- 

 habited shore, is to gather fuel for cooking his yams or his taro- 

 roots ; and if, as often happens on coral islands, fishing parties make 

 a sojourn there of some weeks, the wood of this shrub would be 

 burned in quantities. This inimical influence would not be an affair 

 of to-day but of the ages. It goes to explain why the plant was 

 not recorded by botanists from Keeling Atoll before my visit in 1888 

 (vide Keeling Atoll paper), since long before the white man's occupa- 

 tion of the islands they had probably been visited from time to 

 time by Bugis traders. 



Though typically a plant of the borders of the sandy beach and 

 of the sand-dune, it may also grow on coastal rocks as in Bermuda 

 and in the Bahamas (Harshberger). I came upon this shrub growing 

 on the north coast of Jamaica at St. Anne's, and at Dry Harbour 

 and on the south coast at Paroti Point. But it was in the Turks 

 Islands at the south-east end of the Bahamas that I paid especial 

 attention to it. However, before proceeding to refer to its occurrence 

 in that small group I will notice its distribution in the sand-keys 

 of Florida, as observed by Mr. Lansing and described by Dr. 

 Millspaugh. Out of nineteen keys examined westward of Key West 

 this plant was noted in all but two; but usually it was infrequent 

 and represented by only one or two small colonies growing in its 

 natural station on the sandy soil to the rear of the mangrove belt. 

 Only in four keys was it at all frequent, and in two of these it occupied 

 most of the surface of the islet. In the past, no doubt, man did much 

 to disturb the distribution of this plant in the Florida keys by 

 utilising it for firewood 



In the Turks Islands, though a characteristic strand plant, it as 

 a rule presents itself in the rear-line of the beach vegetation when 

 any arrangement can be detected. But it is equally at home on 

 the sand-dunes behind the beach; and in the smaller cays, when 

 sand has been spread over the island, it also occupies the interior 



