72 A NATURALIST IN THE PACIFIC CHAP. 



only have reached it through the agency of the currents, it is 

 scarcely to be expected that it would have received its few littoral 

 plants with buoyant seeds from the source which has failed it in 

 the cases of the numerous absentees. It is to America therefore 

 that we look for the source of its littoral plants as far as the 

 agency of the currents is concerned. 



The Hawaiian Islands contain about twelve plants, named in 

 the list given in Note 36, that possess seeds or fruits known to be 

 dispersed by the currents, and capable, as experiments indicate, of 

 floating in sea-water for prolonged periods. Not all of them are 

 at present littoral in their station in this group ; but their claim to 

 be considered such in other regions is established in the Note 

 above mentioned. Of these plants, seven at least are found in 

 America, five in the Old World also, and two exclusively in 

 America. This proportion of American plants is far greater than 

 that characterising the whole littoral flora of the Pacific islands 

 dispersed by currents, where out of some seventy species only 

 nineteen are found in America (see Note 35). As far as the 

 distribution of the plants is concerned, it is therefore quite possible 

 that Hawaii has received most of its plants that are dispersed by 

 the currents from tropical America. 



We will now consider how such a possibility is in accordance 

 with the arrangement of the currents in the North Pacific. If we 

 look at the Quarterly Current Charts for this ocean published by 

 the British Admiralty we notice that all through the year the 

 Hawaiian Group lies more or less within the area of currents 

 flowing from the West Coast of America, the Northern Equatorial 

 Currents as they are collectively named. Except in the winter 

 months these currents come from the N.E. and E.N.E., and bring 

 drift from the coasts of British Columbia, Oregon, and Northern 

 California. It is then that they pile up huge pine logs on the 

 shores of the Hawaiian Islands, as I have described in Chapter VII. 

 and in Note 30 ; and, according to Dr. Hillebrand, they transport 

 this drift timber much farther south to the shores of the Marshall 

 and Caroline Groups. One might cite other facts illustrative of 

 the working of these currents, such as one finds in the pages of 

 Fornander and other authors ; but this would scarcely come 

 within the province of this work. I may here remark that when 

 in Honolulu I was informed that a bell-buoy which had got adrift 

 on the Californian coast was subsequently washed up on the coasts 

 of Kauai. It is stated in Findlay's " North Pacific Directory " 

 (1886, p. 1068), that a junk carrying nine hands that had been 



