XII, c, 1 Beccari: Ongin and Dispersal of Cocos Nucifera 39 
with a new flora, as soon as they were in a condition to sustain 
a vegetation. 
The transportation of seeds of plants to these coral islands may 
have been effected otherwise than by the usual ocean currents, 
by means of extraordinarily violent storms, by exceptionally 
high tides, and by the great waves that are occasionally pro- 
duced by telluric movements, and which are of no rare oc- 
currence in that part of the Pacific, wherein a good number of 
the islands appear to rest on volcanic bases. 
It does not seem likely that other forces, such as the winds, 
or birds, or other fruit-eating animals, have contributed much 
to populate certain coral islands (the Palmyras amongst others) 
with flowering plants; because the seeds that might have been 
carried to them by these means belong almost wholly to species 
that do not tolerate the presence of salt in the soil and often 
not even in the air. 
The oceanic coral islands of new formation can be populated 
only by plants of which the seeds, besides being able to float, 
possess also outer wrappings of such a nature that they can resist 
the action of salt water, and which, moreover, can tolerate the 
presence of salt during the period of germination; thus is ex- 
plained the scanty number of plants found on oceanic islands, 
which, like the Keelings and the Palmyras, cannot be regarded 
as being the relics of ancient drowned lands. 
The Palmyra Islands belong in fact, like the Keelings, to those 
islands constituted entirely of coral, of which Darwin wrote, as 
quoted by Hemsley,-“ that they “at one time, must have existed 
as mere water-washed reefs,” and to which all the terrestrial 
products that existed on them, before Europeans settled on them 
and even before any natives had reached them, “must have been 
transported by the v^aves of the sea.” 
It is precisely on account of this circumstance that I maintain 
that the coconut palm has been able to establish itself, unaided 
by man, both in the Palmyras and in the Keelings and, probably, 
in other islands, not well known to us. Indeed, it is on islands 
of this kind and on their scanty soil, almost level with the water, 
that any coconut which may have been washed up on the beach 
and been able to germinate, finding no hindrances nor obstacles 
in any preexisting forest vegetation, would have been able to 
grow and prosper, because it did not find there the many enemies 
which would have hindered its independent development on the 
shores of a continent or on one of the great Asiatic islands. 
“ Report of the Voyage of H. M. S. Challenger, Bot. 1 (1885), The South- 
Eastern Moluccas, 114. 
