PREFACE. 11 



certain degree, by expediency or caprice. Even in the arrangement of the five 

 main sections into which the book is divided, it has seemed expedient to place 

 that part first which, in a rigid natural order, would logically have been placed 

 near the last. Nevertheless it will require no great intelligence on the part 

 of the reader to trace out for himself the historical sequence of nature in Hawaii. 

 No doubt the first great event would be the formation of the islands, followed by 

 their occupation by plants and animals. These events in the natural order, and 

 according to system, would doubtless long precede the peopling of the islands 

 by the Hawaiian race, or the introduction, by them or any other race, of the 

 various foreign plants and animals found in the group. 



The intimate relation which existed between the splendid native Hawaiian 

 people and their isolated environment is a subject of the greatest interest and 

 entitles the human inhabitants to first consideration in the present treatment of 

 this subject. The character and natural history of the race and the use 

 made by the people in their economy, arts and practices, of the various ma- 

 terials furnished them by nature, unites them most closely with their environ- 

 ment ; and in a natural history, such as this, calls for an acquaintance with the 

 Hawaiian race, as a native people and the aboriginal inhabitants of the coun- 

 try, before we consider the environment which they had so thoroughly explored 

 and mastered long before their contact with Europeans. 



It is confidently believed that the all too brief account of the ancient Ha- 

 waiian people is one that will instill a just pride of ancestry into the hearts 

 of those readers whose forebears were of the native Hawaiian race. Not so 

 many hundred years ago, the ancestors of the proudest Europeans were little 

 more than aborigines, and ate nuts and herbs, and depended on the fortunes 

 of the chase for their meat. Not so many centuries before that, as the world 

 measures time, a collection of their handiwork would have shown a group of 

 objects far more crude than were those possessed by the Hawaiians at the time 

 of their meeting with a dominant and powerful race. 



It seems hardly necessary to say that the following pages are not offered 

 primarily as an original contribution to the natural history of Hawaii. The 

 task has been chiefly to bring together information about the islands that only 

 an expert knows where to find. That which has suited the author's purpose 

 has often been taken almost verbatim from the most available, which in many 

 cases has been the original soiirce. 



From the writings of the many experts who luive studied the various fields 

 the natural history of Hawaii affords, the author in his own reading has culled 

 wherever anything was found that would help to make this book more complete 

 or interesting. The fruitful fields have been many, and to workers, past and 

 present, whoever they may be, the author gladly makes the fullest acknowledg- 

 ments. It is owing to the efforts of all that this general treatment of nature in 

 Hawaii is made possible. In many cases where it has been necessary to trace 

 material to its original source, so much has been found that had been borrowed 

 without acknowledgment — even in the writings of our most punctilious scient- 



