158 YEARBOOK OF THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



Honolulu, accompanied the party as a representative of the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture, and his services were particularly valuable, 

 as he was able to compare present conditions with those obtaining 

 at the time of his former visit, 8 years before. The party landed 

 on the island April 24, 1911, and remained until June 5. The pres- 

 ent paper is largely the result of the observations made by this 

 expedition. 



HISTORY OF LAYSAN ISLAND. 



Laysan is the most important island of the group on account of 

 its size, the extent to which it is covered with vegetation, and the 

 fact that it is the only island of the chain which is inhabited by 

 land birds. Its known history is brief. It was named Moller Island 

 in 1828 by Capt. Sanikowitch, after his ship, in ignorance, ap- 

 parently, of the fact that it had been previously discovered by an 

 American ship. In 1834 a brief account of the island and its birds 

 was published in the Museum Senckenbergianum Abhandlungen by 

 the well-known traveler and ornithologist F. H. von Kittlitz. He 

 never visited the island, but obtained his data from the lips of Dr. 

 C. Isenbeck, ship doctor of the Moller, who made a small collection 

 of the island birds. In 1859 Capt. Brooks visited Laysan and 

 in his interesting account reported, among other things, the presence 

 on the island of 5 palm trees 15 feet high. These were probably 

 the same species as the ones on Bird Island and also the one in- 

 digenous to the Hawaiian Islands proper (Pritchardia gaudechaudii). 

 Schauinsland found only the stumps in 1896, and even these have 

 since disappeared. Capt. Brooks collected 25 species of plants on 

 the island. He also noted the presence on the shores of numbers of 

 logs, drift from the northwest coast of America, more than 2,000 

 miles away. In 1891 Henry Palmer was sent to the island by Hon. 

 Walter Rothschild and made a collection of its birds. Schauinsland's 

 visit of three months followed in 1896, and his account, published 

 in Ornithologische Monatsberichte in 1899 and in his Drei Monate 

 auf einer Koralleninsel, contains many extremely interesting notes 

 on the island birds. As Schauinsland records 26 species of plants 

 it is evident that the flora of the island had not diminished in the 

 37 years following Brooks. The visits of Walter K. Fisher and 

 W. A. Bryan followed in 1902 and 1903, and their valuable and 

 interesting accounts bring the ornithological history of the island 

 down to the date of the visit of the party in 1911 under the coopera- 

 tive direction of the University of Iowa and the Department of 

 Agriculture. 



DESCRIPTION OF LAYSAN ISLAND. 



Laysan is a raised coral atoll, doubtless on a volcanic base, about 

 2 miles long by 1J broad, and in shape has been likened to a shallow 

 platter (fig. 2). Its highest part is toward the north, where its 



