6 A NATURALIST IN THE PACIFIC chap. 



forest all is bustle and hurry. We are in the streets, or rather in 

 the distributing areas of the plant-world. We hear the noise of 

 the breaker, the roar of the gale, the cry of the sea-gull, the 

 flapping of a myriad pairs of wings of some migrating host over- 

 head, and we know that the current, the wind, and the bird are 

 actively at work ; but their operations are confined mainly to the 

 beach, the mountain-top, the river, and the pond. 



Let us take a well-wooded Pacific island several thousand feet 

 in height. We find on its beaches the same littoral plants that 

 we have seen before on the tropical shores of Malaya, of Asia, 

 of Africa, and of America. We find in its ponds and rivers the 

 same species of water-plants, such as Ceratophyllum demersum, 

 Ruppia maritima, and Naias marina, that are familiar to us in the 

 cool and tepid waters of much of the globe. On its level summit, 

 if it remains within the clouds we find in the boggy ground, where 

 Sphagnum thrives, genera that are represented in Fuegia, New 

 Zealand, and the Antarctic islands, such as Acaena, Lagenophora, 

 and Astelia, and the world-ranging Drosera longifolia. In other 

 elevated localities we find Ranunculus, Geranium, Sanicula, Arte- 

 misia, Vaccinium, and Plantago, chiefly genera of the temperate 

 regions of the northern hemisphere ; whilst there are also found 

 Gunnera, Nertera, and Uncinia, all hailing from the south and 

 belonging to the Antarctic flora characterising all the land-area 

 around the globe in the latitude of New Zealand and Fuegia. 

 The Hawaiian species of Nertera and of Uncinia occur also in 

 New Zealand, and the first-named is found also in Tristan da 

 Cunha and in South America. In the Hawaiian uplands there 

 is also to be seen Deyeuxia, a genus of grasses found in the 

 Tibetan highlands and in the Bolivian Andes at elevations of 

 16,000 to 19,000 feet ; and the same species that exists in 

 Australia may be found in the mountains of Hawaii. Here 

 also, both in Hawaii and Tahiti, occurs Luzula campestris. 



In making the foregoing remarks on the alpine plants of a 

 Pacific island, I have had Hawaii in my mind, but we find the 

 elements of a similar widely-distributed mountain-flora in the less 

 lofty peaks of Tahiti and Samoa, and traces even in Fiji, where 

 the mountains, however, have only a moderate elevation. But the 

 point I wish to lay stress on is the cosmopolitan yet temperate 

 character of the mountain-flora of an island lying in the midst of 

 the tropical Pacific. As he shifts his station on this mountain- 

 summit, the observer might at different times imagine himself in 

 the Sierra Nevada of California, on a Mexican tableland, on a peak 



