INTRODUCTION. D2. &.& | 
the later arrival in that case receiving a name from a native 
tree with which it bore the greatest resemblance, just as the 
Spanish and English colonists in America and elsewhere named 
the new fruit trees and tuber or cereal plants after those known 
to them in their mother countries? 
It is possible that in early times the Metrosideros polymorpha 
had different names in different islands, it being called ohia in 
the windward islands and lehua in the leeward islands Oahu and 
Kauai, where this name was principally given, as it is still now, 
to the narrow leaved varieties. The arrival of a new tree with 
flowers and foliage resembling the indigenous kinds probably 
induced the natives to combine the two existing names as a 
specific appellation for the native tree, and to distinguish the 
new arrival by its then most distinctive quality — the fleshy 
fruit — which is indicated by the word ai (edible). 
