278 PLANTS, SEEDS, AND CURRENTS 



hot season. In the not infrequent droughts cattle die in numbers, 

 and the gardens of the inhabitants lose most of their plants. 



My principal object being to study the process of stocking the 

 small islands of these seas with plants, I was content to largely 

 limit my observations to such an inquiry. But it was also necessary 

 to obtain some acquaintance with the more extensive flora of the 

 largest island (Grand Turk) ; and though there are gaps in my 

 knowledge of its plants my remarks will, I trust, enable the reader 

 to form some idea of the peculiarities of its flora and of the general 

 facies of the vegetation. Dr. Millspaugh, who studied the plants 

 of this group with the eye of a systematist of great experience in 

 these regions, will be able to give a far more authoritative and com- 

 plete account. I looked at matters not with the discriminative 

 eye of the systematist, but from the standpoint of dispersal. This 

 position was rendered comparatively easy in the case of the plants 

 of the smaller cays, since they were largely stocked with wide- 

 spread strand plants that had long been familiar to me in tropical 

 regions. 



The flora of the smaller cays is, as I have just said, chiefly a strand 

 flora. Characteristic West Indian littoral plants have often taken 

 charge of these small islands. In my description I will begin with 

 the smallest uninhabited cays that are formed almost exclusively 

 of seolian sandstone with but little beach or fore-shore. Next I 

 will take those larger in size, where low-lying, littoral tracts have been 

 added to the nucleus of aeolian rocks, and will then pass on to the 

 large inhabited islands where man has exercised a greater disturbing 

 influence. 



Pear Cay, which derived its name from the abundance of Prickly 

 Pear, is, according to the chart, about forty feet high and about 

 600 yards long. It is entirely formed of seolian rock; and, since it 

 possesses scarcely any beach, landing is not practicable when the 

 sea is rough. Much of the lower levels are strewn with sand supplied 

 by the disintegration of the sandstone, and here flourish Tournefortia 

 gnaphalodes, Suriana maritima, Ipomcea pes-caprw, Sesuvium portu- 

 lacastrum, and Corchorus hirsutus with a little Heliotropium curas- 

 savicum. I have referred in Note 3 of the Appendix to the manner 

 in which the species of Tournefortia, Suriana, and Corchorus adapt 

 themselves to the wind-pressure in this wind-swept cay, and I need 

 not particularise it here. On the upper portion there is little or 

 no sand and the rocky ground is almost exclusively occupied by 

 Ipomoea tuba, which largely conceals the broken slabs of sandstone 

 that lie about. In addition there was a Cyperus (C. brunneusl), 

 which is common on all the small cays. 



The Cactuses of the genus Opuntia, that occur here and on most 

 of the small cays and larger islands, are not differentiated in my 

 description. They form a feature of all the islands, and include 

 two common species, Opuntia tuna, the Prickly Pear, which is the 

 most frequent, and another with very long spines, locally known 

 as " Dildo," perhaps 0. triacantha, Haw. 



Penniston Cay is a long flat strip of aeolian sandstone, twenty- 

 five or thirty feet high. According to the Admiralty chart it would 



