xv LITTORAL AND INLAND PLANTS' RELATIONSHIP 153 



vailed amongst different authors in the determination of the limits 

 of the various species, and to avoid this I have mainly followed 

 Schumann in his monograph on the order (Engler's Naturl. Pflanz. 

 Fam., Theil 4, Abth. 2, 1895), as indicated in Note 57. 



Besides the littoral species Ochrosia parviflora, Hensl., that 

 ranges over most of the archipelagoes of the Pacific from the 

 Solomon Islands to Tahiti, but is not found in Hawaii, we have in 

 the Pacific, O. elliptica, Lab., of New Caledonia and Fiji ; another 

 species of New Guinea and the Ladrones ; and one or two inland 

 species of Hawaii. Ochrosia parviflora was familiar to me on 

 Keeling Atoll, in the coral islets of the Solomon Group, and 

 on the islets and coasts of certain parts of Fiji. Its fruits, which 

 are dispersed by the currents, were found amongst the stranded 

 drift of the Keeling and Fijian beaches. Although usually a coast- 

 tree in Fiji, it came under my notice in one locality growing 

 inland ; and it is a very suggestive circumstance in connection with 

 the inland species of Hawaii, that in Tahiti this tree is only 

 described by the French botanists as growing in the mountains at 

 elevations of 700 to 800 metres above the sea, it having for some 

 reason abandoned the beach. The process which we thus see 

 in operation in Tahiti is completed in Hawaii, and we there find a 

 peculiar inland species far away in the interior of the islands which 

 is placed by Schumann in the same section of the genus with the 

 littoral O. parviflora, that is not, however, found in the group. 

 It may be remarked that Gray describes only one species from 

 Hawaii, O. sandwicensis, but Schumann makes two species of it 

 one, O. compta, Sch., peculiar to the group and referred to the 

 same section as O. parviflora ; the other, the original species of 

 Gray, which he considers as probably a variety of O. borbonica. 

 These determinations of the German botanist, who had no theory 

 to serve, are especially interesting. It is with the littoral trees 

 now missing from the Hawaiian beaches that he compares the 

 inland species of the group, trees now chiefly characteristic the 

 one of the Indian Ocean and the other of the South Pacific ; and 

 we can scarcely doubt that originally one littoral tree ranged over 

 both oceans. 



Hillebrand describes Ochrosia sandwicensis of Gray as a shrub 

 or small tree, 6 to 12 feet in height, growing in the open woods of 

 the lower and middle regions on all the islands. Its dry ellipsoid 

 fruit is two inches (5 cm.) long, and possesses a thin suberose covering 

 on one side and a very thick woody endocarp, one-quarter to one- 

 third of an inch (6 to 8 mm.) in depth. The other species which he 



