PREFACE. XI 
Prof. W. D. Alexander, Surveyor General of the Hawaiian Islands, 
my thanks are due for maps of recent government surveys, 
and to Prof. Lester F. Ward, of the United States Geological 
Survey, Mr. Frank H. Knowlton, of the Smithsonian Institute, 
Dr. George Vasey, of the Agricultural Department, Washington, 
and Prof. W. G. Farlow, of Cambridge, Mass., for advice and 
favors in the prosecution of my own task. Above all to Prof. 
K. Askenasy, of Heidelberg, is the expression of my deepest 
gratitude fitting for his untiring interest in the production of 
the life-work of his friend, the author of the present volume, 
without whose invaluable advice and _ assistance my labors 
would have been far less successful than it is hoped the’ result 
will prove them to have been. 
In conclusion a few words biographical may be in place. 
William Hillebrand was born at Nieheim, Westphalia, on the 
13 Nov., 1821. At the close of his university career at Gottingen, 
Heidelberg, and Berlin he practised his profession, medicine, in 
Paderborn, near his birthplace. On account of an affection of 
the lungs he was soon forced to leave his native country, and 
set sail for Australia. Thence he passed to Manila, in the 
Philippine Islands. While engaged here in practice his health 
again obliged him to wander. At death’s door, as supposed, he 
boarded a brig bound for San Francisco. The voyage was of 
benefit to him, and after arrival in California he sought by advice 
the Sandwich or Hawaiian Islands, where in course of time his 
health became fully restored. 
During a residence of twenty years in Honolulu he prosecuted 
unremittingly the study of the Hawaiian flora, visiting all the 
larger islands, penetrating to the inmost recesses of their deepest 
and darkest ravines, and climbing to the summits of their loftiest 
mountains. He gradually formed about his home an extensive 
garden, crowded with the greatest variety of shrubs and trees 
gathered from ail parts of the world at great expense. The 
cultivation of this garden, full of its native and foreign plants, 
was his chief recreation and delight. 
