374 
proper, there is one place where Casuarina equisetifoUa occurs. This 
is a small bay, Casuarina Bay, on the west coast of North Andaman, 
on the beach of which the species is plentiful. In the Coco group, where 
there are Coco-nut trees, there is no Casuarina equisetifoUa though it 
occurs again in Arracan and Chittagong where there are no Coco-nuts. 
As a matter of fact there is a steady current northward along the west 
coast of the Andamans for a considerable period of the year and it is dif¬ 
ficult to understand why both Cocos and Casuarina do not occur plenti¬ 
fully along the whole west coast of the Andaman chain. The writer’s 
examination of the ocean-drifts of the Coco group during his two visits 
did not throw much light on the subject. Wreckage in considerable 
quantity is to be found along the whole of the coasts, in most cases, how¬ 
ever, belonging to wrecks that have occurred on the spot; the disposi¬ 
tion of the fragments therefore only throws light on the “ set ” of local 
currents. Among the exceptions to this wei’e a dressed teak-log on the 
east side of Great Coco, a padouk-log on the east side of Jerry Island, a 
quantity of Burmese sea-fishing-gear on the eyot between Great Coco 
and Jerry, fragments of two different Andamanese canoes on the east 
coast of Great Coco, a clump with roots of a very large Bamboo (not 
improbably Bambiisa gigantea) on the west side of Great Coco, part of a 
third Andamanese canoe on the east side of the Little Coco, and a fruit, 
with part of stalk, of Nipa frutieavs at the south end of Little Coco. 
Except the Andamanese canoes the whole of these objects indicated a 
“set” of ocean-current from Burma, for though Nipa fruticans which, 
strangel}^ appears to be absent from the Cocos, is both a Burmese and 
an Andamans species, this particular fruit had its stalk cut cleanly off 
by some sharp implement, and if it came from the Andamans it must 
therefore have floated from the neighbourhood of the settlement at Port 
Blair, a sufficiently improbable circumstance, as the examination of a 
map of the Andaman sea will show. Now if the set of the currents is 
such as to bring “drift” from Burma, and if these currents have 
brought the Coco-nut tree originally to the islands, we must explain how 
it happens that the islands of the “ Archipelago ” near port Blair, on the 
shores of which an undoubtedly Burmese “ drift ”, in the shape of teak- 
logs, etc., is very plentiful, do not have Coco-nut trees on all their 
coasts. It has been suggested that the ocean-currents have thrown 
up Coco-nuts on the shores of the Andamans as well as on those of the 
Cocos, but that owing to the presence of the aboriginal inhabitants, 
always on the outlook for what they may pick up on the shore, the 
establishment of the species in the larger group has been impossible 
because any nut thrown up is found by them and immediately eaten or 
destroyed. This suggestion the writer owes to Mr. M. V. Portman of 
184 
