546 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1910. 



Isolation of the Hawaiian Islands. — It may be premised that no 

 other part of the earth's surface is so far distant from continental 

 areas as the Hawaiian Archipelago. The islands are about 2,000 

 miles from the coast of California on the east; about the same dis- 

 tance from the Aleutians on the north and the Marquesas Group on 

 the south; and not much farther from Japan, reckoning from the 

 outermost of the chain of low islands and reefs which stretches from 

 Hawaii some 1,700 miles toward the Asiatic coast. It is important to 

 note, however, that, assuming the availability of these islands as 

 stepping-stones for birds, there would still be an interval of more 

 than 2,000 miles between the most northwestern of the chain and 

 Japan. Hence, if we reject as untenable the theory of a sunken 

 southern continent, of which the Hawaiian Archipelago is the north- 

 ernmost and now the only visible remains, the original introduction 

 into Hawaii of its mammals, birds, insects, and plants presented 

 greater difficulties than were presented to the fauna and flora of any 

 other part of the world. 



So remote and isolated have those islands been since their forma- 

 tion, and so few and uncertain nature's carrying agencies — the birds, 

 the winds, and the ocean currents — that after the islands were thrust 

 up out of the sea ages must have elapsed before they received the 

 parent stocks of the many and diverse forms of plant and animal 

 life peculiar to them. 



That the difficulties of stocking the archipelago with life, great as 

 they must have been, were not insurmountable is proved by the fact 

 that enough waifs found their way to the islands to clothe them with 

 verdure and stock them with animal life. As a result of the com- 

 petitive struggle which followed, upward of 900 species of plants, 

 numerous insects, including many distinct genera, seven species of 

 lizards, more than 50 species of birds, and at least two mammals, 

 nnalty made good their foothold on the islands and flourished, some 

 more, some less, according to their nature and adaptability. 



Avifauna of the Hawaiian Islands. — Among other inhabitants of 

 the islands are some 45 species of passerine birds, one hawk, an owl, 

 a mud hen, a gallinule, a stilt, a duck, a goose, and a few others. 

 All of these I pass by for the moment and come to certain migrants 

 from North America which regularly journey between the islands 

 and the continent, both spring and fall. Four of these migrate in 

 great numbers, viz, golden plover, turnstone. wandering tatler. and 

 bristle-thighed curlew; the shoveler duck and pintail also visit the 

 islands in considerable numbers. In addition to these are perhaps 

 a dozen other ducks and geese whose occurrence in the islands is 

 more or less casual, and the same remark applies to a dozen or 15 

 wading birds. Altogether, including the regular migrants, the 



