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rich: such are the Double Cocoas of the Sechelles, or Mahe Islands, which 
the sea carries regularly every year to the distance of four hundred leagues, 
and lands on the coast of Malabar. The Indians who inhabit that country, 
believed for a long time, that these annual presents of the ocean, were the 
produce of a Cocoa Tree that grew under its waves. They distinguished 
them by the name of marine cocoa nuts. They set as high a value upon 
them as upon ambergris; and to such a length was this extravagance carried, 
that many of those fruits have been sold as high as a thousand crowns 
a-piece. But the French having some years ago discovered the island of 
Mahe, which produces them, and which is situated in the fiftieth degree of 
south latitude, imported them in such quantities to India, that they sunk at 
once in value as well as reputation; for men, in every country, prize those 
things only which are rare and uncommon. 
In every island where the eye of the traveller has been able to contem¬ 
plate the primordial dispositions of nature, he has found the shores covered 
with vegetable productions, the fruits of which possess nautical characters. 
James Cartier and Champlain represent the borders of the lakes of North 
America, as shaded by stately Walnut trees. Homer, who studied Nature 
so attentively in a happy climate, and at a period when she still retained 
her virgin beauty, has planted the Wild Olive along the shores of the island 
on which Ulysses, floating upon a raft, is thrown by the tempest. The 
navigators who made the first discoveries in the seas of the East Indies, 
frequently found in them sand-banks planted with Cocoa trees . Such quan¬ 
tities of Fennel Seed are thrown by the sea on the shores of Madeira, that 
one of its bays has obtained the name of Funchal, or Fennel Bay. 
The seeds of many vegetables are carried along by rivers, and torrents, 
and the ocean, and are frequently conveyed to the distance of many hun¬ 
dred, or thousand miles from the countries in which they were originally 
placed. In this manner, many of the plants of Germany are conveyed to 
the shores of the sea in Sweden ; various plants of Spain and France are 
carried to the shores of Britain ; and the plants of Africa and Asia are often 
conveyed to the shores of Italy . Sir Hans Sloane has given an account of 
four kinds of fruits, which are frequently thrown by the sea upon the coasts 
of the islands of the northern parts of Scotland. These seeds, or fruits, were 
Climbing Sensitive Plant (Mimosa Scandens), Horse-eye Bea?i (Dolxchos 
Pruriens ), Ash-coloured Mckar tree (Guilandina Bonduc), and the Poison 
