512 A NATURALIST ON THE "CHALLENGER." 



worshipped ; the images made, represented ancestors or tutelary 

 deities only. 



There were, according to the Government census of December, 

 1872, 438 lepers at the leper establishment in the Island of 

 Molokai. There can be no doubt that the races inhabiting all the 

 isolated Polynesian Islands must have sprung originally from a 

 very small stock, which arrived there probably hap-hazard in 

 canoes, or possibly sometimes in larger vessels. Hence the races 

 must have been produced by close interbreeding, and only very 

 rarely, if at all, can any extraneous blood have been interfused 

 by the arrival of further waifs. 



May not this circumstance be connected in some degree 

 with the extreme liability of the Sandwich Islanders to the 

 attacks of leprosy ? 



A similar close interbreeding must have occurred in the case 

 of the animals and plants inhabiting isolated islands. No doubt 

 many islands may have been colonized by plants which have 

 sprung from only a single seed transported by birds, or other- 

 wise. Similarly no doubt, all the birds of a species present 

 in an island or group, may have in many cases been the produce 

 of a single pair ; at all events they must certainly have often 

 been the produce of very few pairs ; such interbreeding would 

 be expected to have left its mark on insular floras and faunas. 



The Government Library at Honolulu, contains a splendid 

 collection of Voyages and Travels relating to the islands, and 

 also of sumptuous illustrated works on Natural History, mostly 

 from the library of the late Mr. Harper Pease, the Conchologist. 



For a Catalogue of various works, including Zoological, Geological and 

 Botanical treatises relating to the Sandwich Islands, see Catalogue 

 d'Ouvrages relatives auxlles Hawai, par William Martin. Paris, Challamel 

 Aine, Rue des Boulangers 30, 1867. The List, which forms a somewhat 

 thick octavo volume, is not by any means complete, but contains an im- 

 mense amount of information. 



For the Land Shells, see Harper Pease, " On Polynesian Land Shells." 

 Proc. Zool. Soc, 1871, p. 449. 



For a detailed account of the Volcanoes and their Geological Pheno- 

 mena, see W. T. Brigham, "Notes on the Volcanic Phenomena of the 

 Hawaian Islands." Memoirs. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist. Vol. I, p. 341 ; ibid., 

 p. 564. Also, J. W. Nichol, F.R.A.S., " Note on the Volcanoes of the 

 Hawaian Islands," Proc. R. Soc. Edin. 1875-76, p. 113. 



