286 PLANTS, SEEDS, AND CURRENTS 



Hjalmarsson in the Turks Islands in 1858. Yet the first has since 

 been gathered by Nash and Taylor (1904) in the two neighbouring 

 islands of the Inaguas; the second by Britton, Millspaugh, and 

 Hitchcock on Great Guana Cay and Fortune Island towards the 

 middle of the Bahamas; whilst Borrera thymifolia and Statice 

 bahamensis have probably been since found in the adjacent islands. 

 It is, however, noteworthy that Dr. Millspaugh has described a new 

 species of Euphorbia (E. lecheoides) from the sandy scrub-land of 

 Grand Turk and Great Inagua (Prcenunc. Baham.). It would 

 therefore seem that the endemism which the Turks Islands appeared 

 at first to display in the scrub plants of the sandy plains is often 

 shared with the adjacent islands, the Inaguas and probably also 

 the Caicos Islands. 



Quite a character is given to the scrub vegetation of the plains 

 in the southern part of Grand Turk by the strand plants that long 

 ago deserted the beach and permanently established themselves 

 inland. Here thrive amongst the ordinary scrub such typical 

 shore shrubs and small trees as Dodoncea viscosa, Sophora tomentosa, 

 and Coccoloba uvifera, of which only the last appears occasionally 

 at the border of the beaches. It is not the occurrence of these 

 plants in the sandy inland plains but the desertion of the shore that 

 is difficult to understand. However, this matter will be mentioned 

 again. Here one may notice that the Barbadoes Olive (Bontia 

 daphnoides), which has probably been introduced, is one of the 

 shrubs that are frequent in these southern plains. 



Another littoral plant frequent on the sandy soil of the interior, 

 especially on the elevated northern end of the island, is Corchorus 

 hirsutus. Borrichia arborescens, also a typical plant of the strand, 

 often thrives at the foot of the hill- slopes, where they come down 

 to the creeks and salt-ponds or descend to the beach. A small 

 shrubby tree, known locally as the Manchineel, is also frequent on 

 the lower slopes of the ridge bordering North Creek. It has the 

 habit of the true Manchineel (Hippomane mancinella) and also several 

 of the seed and fruit characters ; but its fruit is almost pyriform with 

 pointed apex, and differs in other respects from the depressed globose 

 fruit of the genuine species. The Manchineel proper, such as often 

 came under my notice in other parts of the West Indies, did not 

 present itself to me either on Grand Turk or in any of the other 

 islands of this small group, though its fruits are one of the commonest 

 constituents of the stranded drift. Dr. Millspaugh characterises 

 it as a scrub-land plant widely spread in the Bahamas, including 

 Grand Turk, where it was collected by Nash and Taylor in 1904 

 (Prcenunc. Baham., I.). It is noteworthy that the Manchineel fruit 

 of the Bahamas is described by Catesby as " shaped like a pear or 

 rather a fig " (Nat. Hist. Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands, 

 II., 95, 1743). He saw very few of the trees and observed 14 none 

 growing on the Sea-Shore." He attributes to them the usual 

 qualities of the Manchineel proper; but it is evident that as in the 

 case of the Grand Turk plant we are here dealing with quite another 

 tree. 



2. The Plants of the Rocky Slopes and Ridges in the Interior of Grand 



