198 Buacxpurn—The Hawaiian Archipelago. 
the much heavier downpour during that period. In my experience the clearest 
and most reliable weather of the year is almost always to be expected in the 
intervals, sometimes of several weeks, among the winter rains; and, on the other 
hand, it often happens that through month after month of the summer there is 
scarcely a day free (especially among the mountains) from frequent drenching 
showers. I remember reading in one of the Honolulu newspapers a statement, 
either in 1881 or 1882, that there had not been a single day during a continuous 
period of six weeks or more, in May and June of that year, on which it had not 
rained at an elevation of one thousand feet on the mountains behind Honolulu ; 
and I remember also at the time I read it feeling well satisfied that the statement 
was correct. On and around some of the higher mountains of Hawaii the 
showers are almost constant. In a table of rainfalls at various places during 
twelve months, 1880-81, that of Hilo (at the foot of Mauna Loa) is given as 118-08 
ins., and December and February figure as the driest months there. The dry 
portions of the island (7.e¢. the districts lying near the western foot of ranges of 
high mountains) are almost devoid of vegetation and of insect life. 
I have dwelt at some length on the temperature and rainfall of the island, 
because doubtless to the equability of the former and the variability of the latter 
in combination must be attributed the fact that very few species of Hawaiian 
insects appear to reach maturity at one season of the year rather than another, 
the immense majority being found at all periods. The Longicornes, especially 
Clytarlus, furnish almost the only instances among the Coleoptera in which I have 
observed a decided tendency to favour one particular season ; and yet of these— 
though the immense majority of my specimens were taken between April and 
August—there are species occurring usually through those months, but which I 
have met with occasionally, quite freshly developed, in November, December, and 
January. 
All the islands of the Hawaiian group (exclusive of those which are mere rocks 
in the sea) deserve to be called mountainous, and they all consist of two very 
distinct regions, viz. a low-lying and flat fringe of some few miles in width, 
adjacent to the coast, and a central system of mountains, forming the largest propor- 
tion of the land. The fringe of plains isin general the only part of the island that is 
inhabited and cultivated. It produces here and there clusters of cocoa-nut palms 
(though they grow far less plentifully than in the groups of islands lyimg south 
of the equator), but is more frequently treeless, or nearly so, having no natural 
* This calculation is made from the few tables of rainfall available to me at the moment, and 
agrees with my own impression on the subject ; but it must not be taken as more than an approxima- 
tion, or as necessarily applicable to all parts of the islands, especially not as applicable to elevated places 
among the mountains, where the summer rainfall is often very large, as compared with that of the 
winter. 
