NATURAL HISTORY NOTES 203 



agreed that they would not on any account venture 

 beyond that boundary-stone of ominous appearance. 



So far as I could pay attention to the botany and 

 land zoology of Minnikoy — for as a marine zoologist 

 I considered that my first duty lay with the reefs 

 and lagoon — I did not discover anything of peculiar 

 interest. Though the island is in the main covered 

 with coconut palms, there are a good many ''country 

 almond " trees ( Terminalia catappd) and there is a 

 fairly abundant undergrowth of shrubs and creepers, 

 Ipomcea and sweet-scented screw-pine predominating in 

 the neighbourhood of the shore. Among the cultivated 

 plants the areca-nut palm and the betel — two plants 

 whose products, enkindled by a morsel of quicklime, form 

 the curious aromatic quid which the Oriental so loves 

 to ruminate — are, of course, to be found. But the 

 feature which distinguishes Minnikoy botanically from 

 all the Laccadive Islands is the great abundance, at 

 the western end of the island, of mosses and lichens 

 on the trees, and of treacherous sheets of the slimy, 

 dirty-looking Nostoc on the ground. 



Though rats are abundant, they keep to the 

 crowns of the coconut palms, and their undesirable 

 existence is only evidenced by the young, half-gnawed 

 coconuts that one sees lying about everywhere. The 

 animals that one sees most of are land-crabs, by 

 whose burrows (mostly those of Ocypoda cordmianus), 

 the ground is honeycombed : wherever there is a well, 



