SEAFARING PLANTS. 



101 



the only members of its vegetable population. At this 

 time there may have been at its eastern end, as the 

 configuration of the land seems to indicate, a large and 

 shallow lagoon round the margins of which might have 

 gro^^Ti such shore plants as various species of " mangrove," 

 samphire, salt wort (Salicornia), sedges, sesuvium, bay- 

 cedar (Suriana), sea-lavender (Tournefortia), and swamp- 

 fern (Chenopodmn) ; or growing along its arid fringes of 

 coral sand, such plants as the prickly podded Ccesalpinia 

 bonducella (nicker nuts), the sea-grape bush (Coccoloha), 

 or the long trailing convolvulus {Ipomoea pes caprce), 

 which does so much to bind the sand and prevent it being 

 blown to the four corners of the earth. 



But all these were merely fascinating pioneers and land 

 reclaimers, whose day has long been over, and which have 

 long since been elbowed out of existence, as factors 

 which count, although one c?vn still come across them dotted 

 here and there in odd corners and unclaimed fringes of 

 the island. 



Yet these " early discoverers," and salt-bitten, sea- 

 faring plants* played as great a part in their day as the 

 old-time human adventurers of the middle ages. They 

 smoothed the Avay for colonists to come after, and clothed 

 the jumble of coral blocks and the sandy coral debris 

 of this reef -like island with its first green coat of vegetation. 

 Out in the open sea, born of the depths of the sea, and raised 

 but little above the waves, this bare reef became, through 

 their efforts, a little green oasis in the midst of the blue 

 expanse of water. And land birds flying from colder 

 regions up north to winter in Central or South America, 

 or vice versa, spied it from afar and recognised it as a 

 temporary or permanent resting-place for their feet. 

 We know what would have followed from the researches 

 of Darwin, Schimper, Kerner, and many others. The 

 land birds, t by all the now well known means, would have 



* The seeds of sesuvium cannot float, and so must have been 

 introduced by birds or wind. 



t The seeds of plants have been found in the stomachs of such 

 sea-birds as the frigate-bu'd, booby and petrel. 



