373 
The Coco-nut tree deserves to be specially noticed. It is not 
known where Cocos nucifera is “ indigenous ” and the suggestion that it 
is “ really wild ” on the Coco Islands and along the north-western coast 
of North Andaman, made by the late Mr. Kurz, {Forest Flora of British 
Burma ii, 540), though true enough so far as the Coco Islands are con¬ 
cerned, is denied, as regards North Andaman, by those officers at Port 
Blair who have had opportunities of investigating the shores of the group. 
Mr. Kurz did not himself visit either the Coco group or North Andaman, 
and unfortunately he does not give any authority for the latter part of 
his statement. But, granting its correctness, the fact remains that about 
Poi’t Blair the tree only occurs as a recent inti’oduction and it is not 
met with elsewhere either in South on Middle Andaman, except as a few 
young trees that have, on Rutland Island, the Sentinels, etc., been deli¬ 
berately planted. More recently^ the writer has been told of a bay in 
one of the islands of the “ Archipelago,” near Port Blair, which is lined 
with Coco-nut trees, the result of the wreck of a particular craft that was 
lost on her way from the Nicobars to a Burmese port; this statement 
the writer has not yet been able personally to verify. In Narcondam 
there are Coco-nut trees in no fewer than three places, and as there is 
absolutely nothing to disturb them there, they are spreading rapidly. In 
Barren Island also there is one bay where a considerable number 
of Coco-nut trees grow and where also the species is rapidly spread¬ 
ing. But in both these islands the introduction has been deliberate 
and quite recent; this in Narcondam is particularly evident from the 
fact that the oldest trees occur along with a grove of Plantains, though it 
is equally apparent that the spread of the species to one, and probably 
to both, of the two other bays where it occurs, has been unassisted by man 
and is due to fallen nuts having been drifted round from the first plant¬ 
ed trees. It is, however, very remarkable that Cocos nucifera should be 
so abundant in the Coco group and be absent from, or very rare in, the 
Andamans proper, including Little Andaman, and that the species should 
again occur in such abundance in the Nicobars. The direction of the 
ocean currents has been suggested as possibly explaining the fact, but 
with very unsatisfactory results, because, whatever be the theoretical 
direction assumed for these currents in oi’der to explain the distribution 
of Cocos nucifera, it must fail to coincide with the direction postulated 
to explain the distribution of Casuarina equisetifoUa, a tree which is 
extremely common in the Nicobars and is so plentiful in Little 
Andaman, where there are no Coco-nuts, that the English equivalent 
for the Andamanese name of the island is “ Casuarina-sand,” the name 
taking its origin from the great prevalence of this species on all its 
beaches But though there are no Coco-nut trees in the Andaman group 
183 
