310 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1954 



the forest, with 4 or 5 men to make trails and cut trees; the Lovoni 

 men were pleased to give us their names for plants and to range far 

 from the trail to bring specimens that would otherwise have escaped 

 Bernardo and me. Without willing cooperation of this sort a forest 

 botanist's work is limited, for the bulk of the material obtained and 

 the labor of felling trees prohibit solitary collecting. On the remain- 

 ing days of the week I would work in the village, making notes and 

 drying specimens, and periodically my assistants would carry dried 

 plants to Levuka and return with needed supplies. The little Lovoni 

 River, flowing through the village, lends charm to the surroundings, 

 where my family had their first prolonged experience of Fijian life. 

 It is perhaps an unfortunate fact that Fijian villages are delightful in 

 inverse ratio to the European and Indian contacts of their people. 



After another brief stay in Levuka, we left on June 12 for Ngau, 

 the southernmost and largest island of Lomaiviti, with an area of 54 

 square miles and elevations up to 2,345 feet. The 40 miles from 

 Levuka were covered in a small copra-collecting cutter, which travels 

 between Levuka and the Ngau villages two or three times a month. 

 On Ngau we had a fine headquarters in Sawaieke, the village of the 

 Mbuli (ranking chief) of the island, and this village served as a base 

 until we returned to Levuka on July 7. I was particularly anxious to 

 work on the heavily forested hills of Ngau, because botanically it is the 

 most neglected of the larger Fijian islands; except for specimens ob- 

 tained in 1854 by the botanists of the surveying ship Herald^ there 

 appears to exist no herbarium material of consequence from Ngau. 



Although higher than Ovalau, Ngau is entirely different in topog- 

 raphy, its sharp ridges leading to a central mass dominated by the 

 tAvin peaks of Ndelaitho and Ndelaithomboni. While I was able to 

 work on some fine forested slopes and spurs, I failed to reach the 

 actual high points. In Ngau we had a sample of a sustained type of 

 storm that the Fijians call mbongiwalu ("eight nights") , during which 

 for a period of more than a week there is literally no break in the rain 

 and the cold wind-driven mist. This is a "dry season" type of storm 

 that must simply be endured ; during it brief collecting trips are possi- 

 ble, but the high ridges are temporarily out of bounds. 



Our final visit to Ovalau was spent for the most part at Thawathi, a 

 Catholic Mission school on the northeastern coast. With the excellent 

 headquarters provided by a dormitory during a vacation period, I 

 was able to work on some of the northern peaks of Ovalau that were 

 less accessible from Lovoni. It may now be felt that Ovalau, at any 

 rate, has been adequately collected, but even here the occurrence of 

 undescribed species is a probability. 



The third largest of the Fijian islands, although it is only a fraction 

 of the size of Viti Levu and Vanua Levu, is Taveuni, which has an area 



