INTRODUCTION TO THE REPORTS ON INSULAR FLORAS. 45 



Islands, and thinks that the presence of the same plants in Arctic and Antarctic regions 

 may be accounted for possibly by this fact. I was much struck at Marion Island of the 

 Prince Edward group by observing that the great albatross 1 breeds in the midst of a 

 dense low herbage, and constructs its nest of a mound of turf and herbage. Some of the 

 indigenous plants, e.g., Acama, have flower-heads [fruits], which stick like burrs to feathers, 

 &c, and seem specially adapted for transportation by birds. Besides the albatrosses, 

 various species of Procellaria and Puffinus, birds which range over immense distances, 

 may, I think, have played a great part in the distribution of plants, and especially account, 

 in some measure, for the otherwise difficult fact (when occurring within the tropics) that 

 widely distant islands have similar mountain plants. The Procellaria and Puffinus in 

 nesting burrow in the ground, as far as I have seen, choosing often places where the 

 vegetation is thickest. The birds in burrowing; a;et their feathers covered with vegetable 

 mould, which must include spores and often seeds. In high latitudes, the birds often 

 burrow near the sea-level, as at Tristan da Cunha and Kerguelen Islands, but in the 

 tropics they choose the mountains for their nesting-place (Finsch and Hartlaub, Ornitko- 

 logie der Viti- und Tonga- Iuseln, 1867, Einleitung, p. 18). Thus Puffinus megasi nests 

 at the top of the Korobasa Basaga Mountain, Viti Leon, fifty miles from the sea. A 

 Procellaria breeds in like manner in the high mountains of Jamaica, I believe, at 7000 

 feet. Peale describes the same habit of Procellaria rostrata at Tahiti, and I saw the 

 burrows myself amidst a dense growth of fern, &c, at 4400 feet elevation in that island. 

 PJmthon has a similar habit. It nests at the crater of Kilauea, Hawaii, at 4000 feet 

 elevation, and also high up in Tahiti. In order to account for the transportation of the 

 plants, it is not of course necessary that the same species of Procellaria or Diomedea 

 should now range between the distant points where the plants occur. The ancestor of 

 the now differing species might have carried the seeds. The range of the genus is 

 sufficient." 



We have already alluded (Part III., p. 313) to Dr Guppy's assumption that it is 

 possible that a seed might be transported by a bird from South Trinidad in the Atlantic 

 to Amsterdam Island in the Indian Ocean. In connection with this, he mentions having 

 found a small hard seed in the gizzard of a Cape pigeon, or Cape petrel, Daption capensis, 

 taken about 550 miles east of Tristan da Cunha; a species of bird which he observed a 

 little southward of South Trinidad, and traced as far as Amsterdam Island. 



Mr John Murray (in litt.) mentions that when birds break their eggs, the matter often 

 hardens on their feet and plumage, and he has seen seeds and small sticks embedded 

 in it ; but this happens at a season when birds are unlikely to fly long distances. 



From the small collections of seeds and fruits taken from the crops of pigeons by Mr 

 Moseley and Dr Guppy, plants of the following genera or species are known to be 

 dispersed by birds in Polynesia: Oncocarpus vitiemis, Pilocarpus spp., Soulamea 



i See Narr. Chall. Exp., p. 294, 1885. 



(BOT. CHALL. EXP. INTRODUCTION — 1885.) 7 



