3 o 4 A NATURALIST IN THE PACIFIC chap. 



of the Composites and Lobeliaceae, and of a few other orders in 

 Hawaii and Tahiti. In this age the islands of the Western Pacific 

 do not seem to have participated, and it is to be inferred that this 

 was an age of extensive but probably not of complete submergence 

 in that part of the ocean, since at least the genus Dammara was 

 able in places to hold its ground. Then ensued the great Tertiary- 

 emergence of the land-areas of the Western Pacific, when small 

 islands that dotted the sea-surface in this region became the nuclei 

 for the formation of the large islands of the present Fijian, New 

 Hebrides, and Solomon groups. This prepared the way for the 

 migration of Malayan plants which now predominate over the 

 islands of the tropical Pacific ; and in a later age man, following 

 the same track from Indo-Malaya, occupied these islands. 



In my volume on the geology of Vanua Levu it was shown that 

 the Tertiary period was an age of submergence in the Western 

 Pacific, and a disbelief in any previous continental condition was 

 expressed. My later view is more in accordance with that of 

 Wichmann, who, on geological grounds, contended that the islands 

 of the Western Pacific were in a continental condition during the 

 Palaeozoic and Mesozoic periods, and that their submergence and 

 subsequent emergence took place in Tertiary times. The distribu- 

 tion of the genus Dammara has thus led me to modify the views 

 expressed in the final chapter of my first volume on the geology of 

 Vanua Levu. Though still holding that there is no geological 

 evidence that the various islands of the Fijian group were ever 

 amalgamated, or that they were joined as such to the westward 

 groups, it is quite possible that their position was indicated by 

 a few small islands a few miles across and a few hundred feet 

 in height in early Tertiary times. On these small islands, which 

 probably represented the remains of a submerged Mesozoic land- 

 area, such as is in part implied in Dr. Forbes' Antipodea, or in 

 Mr. Hedley's Melanesian Plateau, the genus Dammara survived. 

 Such islands merely indicated the situation of some of the present 

 groups of the Western Pacific, which have been since largely built 

 up by submarine eruptions, and the greater number of the islands 

 were no doubt completely submerged. Between the groups as we 

 know them now there never was any land connection, since they 

 are the product of later eruptions, mainly submarine ; and they 

 have acquired their present composite character during the emer- 

 gence that followed the period of volcanic activity. Except, per- 

 haps, in New Caledonia, which does not seem to have shared in the 

 Tertiary submergence, the islands of the Western Pacific have 



