300 A NATURALIST IN THE PACIFIC CHAP. 



and we should have to apply the same explanation to the New 

 Zealand species, concerning which no one, so far as I know, has ever 

 ventured to suggest that it was introduced by the Maoris. 



The native names of the trees seem to have been sometimes 

 connected with general words for gums or resins ; whilst at other 

 times the tree and the resin have separate designations. Thus the 

 Fijians call the tree " ndakua " and the resin " makandre," which 

 last Hazlewood in his dictionary seemingly connects with 

 " ndrenga," the word for " gum." In my work on the Solomon 

 Islands, page 190, I have endeavoured to show that the Maori 

 name of " kauri " may be connected with " gatah," the general 

 Malayan word for gums and resins, transitional stages being 

 presented in the names of resin-yielding trees in the intermediate 

 regions, as, for instance, by " gutur," a species of Canarium, 

 on the Maclay coast of New Guinea, and by " katari," a species of 

 Calophyllum, in Bougainville Straits, Solomon group. It may be 

 pointed out that these facts of plant-nomenclature do not promise 

 us any aid in determining the mode of dispersion of Dammara in 

 the Western Pacific. There is a suspicious resemblance between 

 the Fijian name of " ndakua " and " dundathu," the Queensland 

 aboriginal name for Dammara robusta ; but even if the comparison 

 is legitimate, its explanation may lie far back in the ages in some 

 root-word as ancient as the Malayan " gatah." 



If there is a real difficulty in applying our canons of plant- 

 dispersal to the distribution of Dammara, it is merely the same 

 difficulty that has so often perplexed the botanist with other 

 Coniferous genera in continental regions, such as, for instance, the 

 occurrence of Pinus excelsa on the far-removed mountains of 

 Europe and of the Himalayas, and the existence of the cedar in 

 its isolated homes on the Atlas, the Lebanon mountains, and the 

 Himalayas. Such difficulties largely disappear if we regard the 

 present distribution of the Coniferae as the remnant of what it was 

 in an ancient geological period. In the case of Dammara it seems 

 almost as idle to puzzle over its means of dispersal as to consider 

 the mode of dispersal of the Marsupials. The questions, indeed, 

 that affect the Dammaras of Fiji and the Western Pacific far 

 ante-date any questions concerning a previous continental condition 

 of those regions. The attitude of the palaeobotanist to such 

 questions would probably be one of indifference; yet to the 

 student of plant-distribution they are of prime importance ; and 

 nolens volens we must admit that Dammara may well be cited 



