BOTANY OF THE LACCADIVES, being NATURAL 
HISTORY NOTES FROM H. M. I. M. SURVEY 
STEAMER INViJSTIGATOB;* Commander 
R. F. HOSKYN, R.N., COMMANDING. 
Series II., No. 5. By D. Peain. 
Introduction. 
The Laccadive Archipelago is situated at the south-eastern 
angle of the Arabian Sea, between Lat. 10° and 14° N. and Lon. 
71° 40' and 74° E., and is composed of 16 or 17 small coral islands, 
the most easterly of which lies 120 miles to the westward of the 
Malabar Coast, while the most southerly is about the same distance 
to the north of the Maidive Archipelago. Between the Laccadive 
and the Maidive Archipelagos lies the island of Minikoi in Lat. 8°30' 
N., and Lon. 72° 40' E. This island is sometimes spoken of as being 
one of the Maldives, owing to the fact of its being rather nearer to 
that Archipelago than to the Laccadives, and because its population 
is Maidive in language and in manners j usually, however, it is 
treated, as it will be in this paper, as a Laccadive Island, because its 
political allegiance has always, within historical times, been with the 
latter group. In reality, however, it cannot be precisely looked on 
as a member of either group, though being one of the atoll-crowned 
submarine peaks characteristic of the two archipelagos, it is clearly 
a link in the chain to which both belong. It was at one time 
supposed that the atolls of this chain were situated on a bank 
separated from the nearest mainland (the coast of Malabar) by 
an ocean trough.* This is now found to be incorrect, and the 
islands form in reality " a chain of peaks rising from a bed of 1,100 
“fathoms, or are in themselves 6,600 feet above the bottom, 
“ a height somewhat similar to that of the Western Ghats in those 
“ latitudes.”! 
* Hume, “ Btray Feathers,” vol. iv., p. 459. 
t Carpenter, ” AJministration Reports of the Marine Survey of India,” year 
1887-8S, p. 7 ; year 1888 89, p. 0. 
SOI 
