BOTANICAL STUDIES IN FIJI — SMITH 307 



lated remnants in Tertiary time. A knowledge of what plants are 

 indigenous in Fiji today will help materially in an understanding of 

 past earth movements in the region, especially if such knowledge can 

 be correlated with similar data from the New Hebrides, the Solomon 

 Islands, and New Caledonia to the west, and from Samoa and Tonga 

 to the east. It is unlikely that the fossil record in this part of the 

 world will ever be complete enough to give a true picture of Tertiary 

 vegetation, and so we may have to depend upon an interpretation of 

 modern vegetation for our eventual reconstruction of plant migra- 

 tions. And yet, the only floristic study of Fiji of any completeness, an 

 excellent study for its period, is the nearly century-old "Flora 

 Vitiensis." ^ Obviously the phytogeographer who depends upon so 

 outmoded a work for his basic information will reach unsound con- 

 clusions. For neighboring archipelagoes the picture is no more en- 

 couraging; in fact, for the New Hebrides and the Solomon Islands 

 our floristic knowledge is much more fragmentary than it is for Fiji. 



One of my preoccupations for more than 20 years has been a study 

 of the plants of Fiji, my intention being to supplement Seemann's fine 

 work with a Flora which, presumably, will give a more realistic pic- 

 ture of the modern vegetation of the archipelago. This intention has 

 had its vicissitudes, but after three extended field trips,^ during which 

 approximately 65,000 herbarium specimens were prepared, I feel that 

 a reasonably well-documented Flora can finally be visualized. 



Perhaps I can best suggest to the reader the methods of a tropical- 

 plant collector by briefly recounting in chronological order the events 

 of my most recent trip. On earlier trips I had visited some of the out- 

 lying islands of the group and also representative portions of the two 

 largest islands, Viti Levu and Vanua Levu.^ Consequently I had in 

 mind a few remaining "blind spots," which earlier collectors had either 

 not reached or had visited only cursorily. These areas included a 

 region of precipitous mountains, the Korombasambasanga Kange, in 

 south-central Viti Levu, the hills of Tailevu and Serua Provinces, in 

 the east and south of the same island, and portions of the volcanic is- 

 lands of Ovalau, Ngau, and Taveuni. 



* Seemann, Berthold, Flora Vitiensis : A description of the plants of the Viti 

 or Fiji Islands with an account of their history, uses, and properties, xxxiii-f453 

 pp., 100 pis., 1805-73. 



' The first of these trips, in 1933-34, was sponsored by the Beruice P. Bishop 

 Museum, the New York Botanical Garden, and Yale University; the second, in 

 1947_48, by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the Arnold 

 Arboretum of Harvard University, with the aid of grants from the National 

 Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society ; and the third, in 

 1953-54, by the Smithsonian Institution and the National Science Foundation. 

 To the sponsors who have thus demonstrated an Interest in the project I am 

 deeply grateful. 



'For itineraries of these trips, see Journ. New York Bot. Gard., vol. 35, pp. 

 261-280, 1934, and Journ. Arnold Arb., vol. 31, pp. 138-141, 1950. 



