385 
of further evidence, however, it is treated as only doubtfully sea- 
introduced, Another doubtful species is Dodoncsa viscosa, a cosmopolitan 
species. Still another, equally doubtful, is Gloriosa superba which is ex¬ 
ceedingly common in the coast zone on both the Coco Islands, and which 
the writer has collected, in the coast zone also and only there, in South 
Andaman, in Rutland Island, in Batti Malv, in Car Nicobar, in Narcon- 
dam, and in Barren Island, and which Dr. Alcock has collected, near the 
sea, in the Laccadives. On the whole therefore we might feel justified 
in considering it a sea-introduced species. But it is very abundant also 
throughout the whole of India; it extends from the Nilghiris and 
Central India to Rajputana, the Panjab, and the Gangetic plain, as well 
as to the Himalaya from Kamaon to Bhutan, and is common in Bengal, 
Assam and Burma. It cannot very easily be bird-introduced and one 
must therefore incline to the opinion that the agency responsible here 
is that of winds, a view which is favoured by the nature of its seeds. 
But even then it is not easy to suppose that winds could carry these as far 
as some of the islands mentioned and still that its distribution should be 
limited to South-Eastern Asia. Oroxylum indicum might possibly be 
sea-inti’oduced, but on the whole has more probably been brought by 
wind. It need not be indigenous for it occurs in abundance in Narcondam. 
Though its fruits occur in the “ drifts ” they are always split open and 
it is unlikely that the seeds could remain attached to the fruit-segments 
during their transit from any of the neighbouring coasts. 
Few of the cryptogams can be considered “ littoral ” and the state¬ 
ments that have been made of the possibility of Fungi, etc., being brought 
to ocean-islands attached to logs of wood or trunks of trees are not as a 
rule made by those who have seen and carefully examined ocean-drifts. 
Even Polyporus sangumale, which apparently has a prediliction for dead 
or dying trunks of Cocos nucifera, being commoner there than in any 
other situation, was not found growing on any of the trunks that lie on 
the beaches exposed to the sun after having been soaked in salt water. 
The logs that are cast up on the beach and the roots that protrude from 
the sand at those points where denudation is going on, are scrubbed 
bare by the coral-sand and bleached white by the sun ; they harbour no 
Fungi and seem preserved from decay by the treatment to which 
they have been subjected. There is, however, a striking exception in a 
“ dry-rot ” which attacks Mimusops littoralis trunks and some other 
timbers. In the case of the Bullet-wood it was seen both on Great and 
Little Coco; the same appearance was presented by the remains of 
a wooden vessel in Little Coco, The appearance and consistence of 
this “ dry-rot ” so closely resemble the results of charring that it was 
difficult to realize that the wood in question had not been subjected to 
195 
