OF THE TONGA OR FRIENDLY ISLANDS. 163 
3. Observations on some Remarkable Plants from the 
Solomon Islands. 
The Solomon group consists of a chain of islands, some 600 
miles in length, extending in a south-easterly direction, from 
New Britain and New Ireland (now the New Pomerania and New 
Mecklenburg of the Germans), nearly to the New Hebrides. 
The larger islands are from 50 to 100 miles in length, and 15 to 
30 miles in breadth, with elevations of 8000 feet in Guadalcanar, 
in the south, to 10,000 feet in Bougainville, in the north. So 
far as I know, none of the earlier voyagers landed in these 
islands ; but they were visited by D’Urville in 1838, and by 
Denham (H.M.S. ‘ Herald’) in 1853; and William Milne, who 
was attached to the ‘ Herald’ in the capacity of botanical col- 
lector for Kew, collected some 200 species of plants in the coast 
region, nearly all of which are plants of wide range. Within 
the last decade, however, both English and Germans have 
reached the mountains of the interior of some of the islands, and 
discovered a varied and curious indigenous flora. Dr. K. Schu- 
mann has published some of the novelties collected by Dr. 
Naumann and other Germans in the ninth volume of Engler’s 
‘ Jahrbiicher’; and Dr. H. B. Guppy, in his book entitled ‘The 
Solomon Islands and their Natives,’ gives a rough list of the 
plants he collected, from approximate determinations made 
at Kew. This collection contained a considerable number 
of novelties, some of which have since been described by 
Dr. Beccari, Professor D. Oliver, and myself; but many of the 
specimens were insufficient for description, though evidently un- 
described. To some considerable extent this collection has been 
supplemented by the Rev. R. B. Comins, who brought home a 
small parcel of dried plants in 1890, and who has since sent to 
Kew two other small parcels. It is not my intention at present 
to attempt to give an enumeration of all the plants known from 
the Solomon Islands, because it would be, at best, a very small 
fragment of a manifestly rich endemic flora, therefore I will 
confine myself to directing attention to a few of the more re- 
markable plants contained in the collections to which I have 
referred. 
As Dr. Guppy was first in the field, I will begin with some of 
his novelties. Myrmecophilous plants appear to abound, espe- 
cially the rubiaceous genera Hydnophytum and Myrmecodia. 
