xxxviii FAUNA HAWAIIENSIS 



fearless, and it was only just not possible to touch them with the hand. Sometimes 

 it was quite impossible to shoot a rare species, since it would keep following up the 

 collector, as he moved away, perching overhead at only a gun-length's distance. Then, 

 its curiosity satisfied, it would fly off altogether and be lost in the density of the brush. 

 Excepting in the more open forest, in the neighbourhood of ranches, the woods are 

 quite uninhabited, and sometimes for weeks together I never saw a human being. 

 Occasionally a native would come up and leave letters for me or take them down from 

 my tent, but usually I was away collecting, when he arrived. 



Hawaiian islands much richer in species than has been supposed, and 

 the scarcity of individuals of species exaggerated. 



Oceanic islands are generally said to produce but few species of native insects, 

 but their unproductiveness has certainly been exaggerated, owing to the hidden life 

 and small size of so many of these inhabitants. It has also been supposed that 

 individuals of the species are as a rule and comparatively speaking rare. In the 

 case of the Hawaiian islands, and probably of most remote oceanic islands, the insects 

 and other animals are limited to a small variety of types compared with other lands, 

 but the types represented are often extremely rich in species, which, one might almost 

 say, do their best to fill up the vacancies caused by the absence of many forms of life 

 almost ubiquitous elsewhere, but which have never reached these remote islands. 

 When talking to the late Dr Ashmead, who visited the islands in 1900, he insisted 

 that certain large groups of parasitic Hymenoptera, of which he had a specialist's 

 knowledge, must, being of universal distribution elsewhere, be really well represented 

 in the islands, though no species (excepting a few evidently imported) had ever been 

 collected. But in reality it is not at all surprising that these do not occur. Firstly 

 the chances of any vagrant insect, carried across the ocean either by wind or wave, 

 happening to land on a few small spots in mid ocean must be very small, and then 

 the possibility of its acclimatisation has to be considered. We know from practical 

 experience that many insects, which it has been desired to introduce, fail to establish 

 themselves in this climate. If a plant-eating species, it may find no fit vegetable food, 

 if parasitic, no fit animal food. But in the case of such specialized creatures, as most 

 parasitic insects, unless either a number of the host, they feed upon, has arrived with 

 them, or previously, and become established, or unless there happens to be some other 

 insect present, which may serve as a new host, the chance of a successful occupation 

 by a parasitic insect is very small. 



The paucity of individuals of a species is also, I think, much less than has 

 been supposed, this supposition being due to the small size, hidden life and special 



