Sandwich-Island Birds. 171 



pletely severed from the great continents as they are now. 

 Indeed they lie some 2100 miles from the nearest point in the 

 American continent (San Francisco), and they are at about 

 the same distance from Samoa and the Marquesas on the 

 south, and from the Aleutian Islands towards the north, though 

 some widely scattered reefs and atolls, six or seven hundred 

 miles off, serve to connect them with the other Pacific 

 islands. 



The Hawaiian group stretches from south-east to north- 

 west for about 350 miles ; but though so extensive, it is 

 entirely volcanic and its principal island possesses two active 

 volcanoes, the lava-streams from which render a large part 

 of its area a treeless and barren waste. There are eight inha- 

 bited islands — Hawaii, Maui, Oahu, Molokai, Lanai, Kahoo- 

 lawe, Kauai, and Niihau. Of these, Kahoolawe and Niihau, 

 the two smallest, have no forests remaining. Hawaii is the 

 most southerly and by far the largest of the group, having 

 an area of 4100 square miles, and being well compared by 

 Mr. Wallace to Devonshire, " with which it closely agrees both 

 in size and shape, though its enormous volcanic mountains 

 rise to nearly 14,000 feet high." Maui, Oahu, and Kauai, 

 each about the size of Hertfordshire or Bedfordshire (again 

 to use Mr. Wallace's comparison) come next in point of area, 

 and these are followed by Molokai, Lanai, Niihau, and 

 Kahoolawe in the order here named. 



On my first visit to the large island of Hawaii (coming 

 from Honolulu) in May 1877, I landed at Kealeakakua Bay, 

 on its west coast, the scene of Captain Cook's unfortunate 

 death. Throughout the district of Kona, as this part of the 

 island is named, the forest begins at an elevation of about 

 1100 feet, and stretches for some six miles up the slopes of 

 the great mountain Mauna Loa (13,700 feet). For some 

 considerable distance the more abrupt slopes of Mauna 

 Hualalai (8275 feet) are also covered with dense forest. 

 A great portion, however, of this island, especially the region 

 from the sea-board to 1100 feet, is, as already stated, a 

 desert waste of beds of clinkers and of lava-streams, which 

 have rolled down to the sea from its three great volcanos— 



