Medical Officers of the Army of India.

63

TABLE I.—Modes of introduction of Laccadive Plants.

      The general distribution of the flora is, next to its means of introduction, the
feature of greatest interest. The majority of its constituent species, cultivated
and wild alike, are cosmopolitan in the tropics, while there is not a single species
that the flora does not share with the adjacent Indian mainland, and only five that
it does not share with Ceylon. Even Lepturus repens, for which the archipelago
is a new, but not an unexpected locality and which has not been hitherto in-
cluded in Indian lists, was collected by Mr. Hume at Vingorla Rocks near the
Goanese coast during the same voyage as that in which he obtained his
Laccadive collection.¹

      It ought to be observed that the date of Dr. Alcock's visit—the first week
of March—was only a fortnight later in the season than that of Mr. Hume's
visit, yet in Kiltan Dr. Alcock found a wild vine growing in great profusion which
Mr. Hume, who visited the same island, did not observe. The list contains other
instances, but this is the most striking, and it at once suggests the possibility of
this species having been introduced during the interval between 1875 and 1889,
and indicates one of the possible interests that may underlie a comparison of
this with subsequent lists.

   ¹This is the species referred to in Mr. Hume's paper in " Stray Feathers " as perhaps a species of
Hemarthria. Dr. King, who has very kindly examined the specimens along with me, assents to the identifi-
cation now made. Dr. Trimen records it from Ceylon (Cat. of Ceylon Plants, p. 110, [1885]); it was not
known from Ceylon at the time that Dr. Thwaites' " Enumeration of Ceylon Plants " was published.