156 A NATURALIST IN THE PACIFIC chap. 



enables me to tread on relatively safe ground in making my 

 deductions. The three genera of the order, Freycinetia, Pandanus, 

 and Sararanga, each tell their own story ; and in each and all of 

 them I have taken an especial interest from the standpoint of 

 their dispersal. Freycinetia is fully discussed in Chapter XXV., 

 and presents no difficulties respecting its dispersal. In the 

 discovery of Sararanga the author has had a share. It was first 

 established by Mr. Hemsley from specimens sent by me to Kew in 

 1885 ; and it has received from the botanist the name given to it 

 by the natives of the islands of Bougainville Straits in the Solomon 

 Group, where I first collected it. It contains only one species and 

 was also discovered by Dr. Beccari, the celebrated Italian botanist, in 

 Jobie Island, New Guinea. From the other two genera of the 

 order, Pandanus and Freycinetia, it stands quite apart ; and it 

 apparently presents us with a relic of some ancient flora on the 

 western borders of the Pacific. Its fleshy drupes (one-half to three- 

 quarters of an inch in size) inclosing several small osseous pyrenes 

 seem suited for dispersal by birds ; and it is not at first sight easy 

 to understand why its distribution should be so limited, unless this 

 is connected with its dioecious habit (see Guppy's Solomon Islands, 

 p. 302 ; Journ. Linn. Soc. Bot. vol. xxx. ; and Warburg's monograph). 

 It is, however, with the genus Pandanus that we are here 

 especially concerned. If the advocate of the previous continental 

 connections of Fiji and the groups around were to look for 

 evidence in support of his views, he apparently could not do better 

 than take this genus. Whilst P. odoratissimus, the littoral species 

 of tropical Asia and Malaya, is found on the coasts of almost 

 all the Pacific islands from Fiji to Tahiti and northward to 

 Hawaii, it is only in the archipelagoes of the W T estern Pacific, 

 namely, in Fiji and Samoa, that inland endemic species have been 

 found. (Such species occur also in the more western islands 

 not dealt with here — New Caledonia, Solomon Islands, &c.) Not 

 even in Hawaii, with all its botanical evidence of antiquity, has an 

 inland endemic species been found, although the coast species 

 extends miles inland, and for nearly 2,000 feet up the mountain 

 slopes. When, however, we turn to Fiji and Samoa, we find in 

 each group two endemic inland species. To endeavour to connect 

 the inland species of Fiji and Samoa with the widespread littoral 

 Pandanus odoratissimus, that owes its dispersal largely to the 

 currents, is out of the question, at least for the student of plant- 

 dispersal, since they belong to different sections of the genus, and 

 in their characters are often far removed (see Note 58). 



