xxvin ALEURITES MOLUCCANA 419 







events to give a character to the forest zone up to 2,000 feet above 

 the sea. Its prevalence in Hawaii might be regarded as evidence 

 of its indigenous character ; but its predominance there is due to 

 the circumstance that it is one of the few forest-trees that the 

 cattle and other animals avoid, most other trees falling victim to 

 their depredations by the loss of the bark. In Fiji, though frequent 

 in places, it does not form such a conspicuous feature in the 

 vegetation as in Hawaii. In Samoa it is abundant in the coast- 

 bush. In Rarotonga it forms with Hibiscus tiliaceus, as we learn 

 from Cheeseman, the major portion of the lower forests, a circum- 

 stance which seems to indicate, since both these trees were probably 

 introduced by the natives, that this island like Hawaii has lost or 

 is losing many of its original forest-trees. In Tahiti, according 

 to Nadeaud, it is common from the sea-level up to 3,000 feet 

 above the sea. 



As a Polynesian tree, Aleurites moluccana presents itself to me 

 .as an intruder which has often taken the place of trees of the 

 primeval forests of these islands. That the natives usually employ 

 the oily seeds for illuminating purposes is well known ; and its 

 prevailing name of Tuitui (Kukui in Hawaii) is derived from the 

 Polynesian custom of threading the seeds before using them for 

 lighting purposes. One of the Fijian names, " Sikethi," is sugges- 

 tive of " Saketa," a name for the tree in the Ternate dialect of the 

 Indian Archipelago. To the modes of dispersal of this tree, I have 

 devoted much attention. 



The more or less empty seeds of this tree are to be com- 

 monly found floating in rivers and stranded on beaches. I 

 have found them in numbers on the beaches of Fiji and Hawaii 

 in the Pacific, and of the south coast of Java and of Keeling Atoll 

 in the Indian Ocean. In all I have examined many hundreds of 

 these seeds, whether stranded on the beaches in the localities above 

 named, or floating in the Fijian rivers and at sea amongst the 

 islands of that archipelago. The seeds were always either empty 

 or contained a kernel in an advanced stage of decay. A sound 

 seed has no floating power under any condition ; and sound seeds 

 are only to be found in beach drift near the mouths of estuaries, 

 where they have been freed by the decay of the fruits brought 

 down by the rivers. During some dredging operations in the 

 harbour at Honolulu several years ago, quantities of old Aleurites 

 fruits and seeds were brought up. It is only by means of the 

 floating fruit that the sound seed can be carried any distance by 

 the currents ; but even in this case the opportunities of wide 



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