xvi LITTORAL AND INLAND PLANTS' RELATIONSHIP 157 



As regards the agency of birds, it is of course possible that 

 fruit-pigeons that can disperse the " stones " of Canarium and 

 Elaeocarpus could transport the smaller drupes of Pandanus to 

 oceanic islands like the Fijis, Samoa, and the Mascarene Islands ; 

 and in Note 58 reference is made to the size of the drupes of the 

 endemic species of Pandanus in those groups. But my difficulty is 

 that I have not come upon any record of birds eating these fruits ; 

 and I should imagine that amongst living birds only those like the 

 cassowary and its kin would prefer such a kind of diet ; whilst the 

 only pigeon that could have ever attempted it must have been able 

 to swallow pebbles like the dodo. It is remarkable that the 

 Mascarene Islands, the home of the extinct Columbae, possess more 

 endemic species of Pandanus than any other groups. 



Dr. Warburg points out that, with the exception of some three 

 or four species dispersed by the currents (P. dubius, P. leram, 

 P. polycephalus, P. odoratissimus), almost all the species (156 in 

 number) are very restricted in their areas. When we look at his 

 table of the distribution of the genus we notice that, excepting the 

 islands of the Hawaiian and Tahitian regions, nearly all the 

 elevated or mountainous islands of the tropical and subtropical 

 latitudes of the Indian and Pacific oceans have their peculiar 

 species, whether in the case of Mauritius, Rodriguez, Reunion, and 

 the Seychelles in the one ocean, or of Lord Howe Island, New 

 Caledonia, Fiji, and Samoa in the other. The student here hesi- 

 tates even to raise the question of present plant-dispersal in the face 

 of such evidence of isolation all over the area of the genus. He is 

 almost inclined to evade the issue and to place the matter beside 

 that of the dying or extinct Columbae that have been found in 

 some of these islands, as in Mauritius, Rodriguez, Reunion, and 

 Samoa. 



For reasons above given in the instance of Fiji and Samoa, 

 it would seem futile to attempt to connect in their origin the inland 

 with the coast species ; and it may be inferred that, excepting the 

 few dispersed by the currents, the species are in the main inland in 

 their stations. Those peculiar to Fiji, for instance, occur in the 

 swampy forests of the lower regions of the interior, as well as high 

 up towards the mountain summits. When traversing the Fijian 

 forests I often used to speculate on the modes of dispersal of the 

 plants familiar to me ; but the sight of a strange Pandanus usually 

 brought my speculations to a close. Many of the enigmas of 

 insular floras would be solved if we could interpret aright the 

 156 species of Pandanus that are enumerated and described by 



