INTRODUCTION. 
The Hawaiian Islands, lying between 18° 55‘ and 22° 15‘ 
N. lat. and 154° 50’ and 160° 30’ W. long. from Greenwich, 
are more remote from any continent or high land of considerable 
extent than any group of similar dimensions on our globe. 
The shortest distance to the American Continent is 2040 
geographical miles; to the Marquesas, the nearest high islands 
in the Pacific Ocean, it is only 180 miles less (1860), and to 
Tahiti 150 miles more (2190). Of other large islands which can 
serve for comparison, New Caledonia, with an area nearly equal 
to that of our group, is at a distance of 660 miles from 
Australia, and the Vitis or Fijis, with an area only little larger, 
are 1410 miles from the same continent; but both are connected 
by an almost continuous series of high islands with New Guinea 
and the Malay Archipelago. New Zealand, with an area sixteen 
times as large, is 1080 miles distant from the nearest point of 
Australia. Madagascar and the Mascarene Islands are only 300, 
miles apart, and St. Helena, although 1120 miles from the 
African coast, is too small to be placed in comparison. 
There is no ground for supposing that in past geological ages 
this isolation of the Hawaiian group has been less complete. It 
is true that in a northwesterly direction a succession of reefs and 
low uninhabited islets extends for a distance of thirty degrees 
of longitude about halfway to Japan, revealing a narrow band 
of raised sea-bottom, with an average depth of less than 1000 
fathoms. This line of reefs and islets follows exactly the trend 
of the fissure in the globe’s crust on which the Hawaiian volcanoes 
have been built up, and, as there is abundant evidence that 
the age of the different islands of the group increases from 
east to west, it is fair to conclude that these islets, rocks, and 
reefs lie on the same fissure and are only the coral covered 
peaks of submerged older volcanoes, or, in other words, that the 
