CHAPTER XV 



THE SANDWICH ISLANDS 



Position and Physical Features — Zoolog_Y of the Sandwich IsLinds — Birds 

 — Reptiles — Land-shells — Insects — Vegetation of the Sandwich Islands 

 — Peculiar Features of the Hawaiian Flora — Antiquity of the Hawaiian 

 Fauna and Flora — Concluding Observations on the Fauna and Flora of 

 the Sandwdch Islands — General Remarks on Oceanic Islands. 



The Sandwich Islands are an extensive group of large 

 islands situated in the centre of the North Pacific, being 

 2,350 miles from the nearest part of the American coast 

 — the bay of San Francisco, and about the same distance 

 from the Marquesas and the Samoa Islands to the south, 

 and the Aleutian Islands a little west of north. They 

 are, therefore, wonderfully isolated in mid-ocean, and are 

 only connected with the other Pacific Islands by widely 

 scattered coral reefs and atolls, the nearest of which, 

 however, are six or seven hundred miles distant, and are 

 all nearly destitute of animal or vegetable life. The 

 group consists of seven large inhabited islands besides 

 four rocky islets ; the largest, Hawaii, being seventy miles 

 across and having an area 3,800 square miles — being 

 somewhat larger than all the other islands together. A 

 better conception of this large island Avill be formed by 

 comparing it with Devonshire, with which it closely 

 agrees both in size and shape, though its enormous 

 volcanic mountains rise to nearly 14,000 feet high. 



