348 A NATURALIST IN THE PACIFIC chap. 



Wikstrcemia (Thymelaeaceae). — This is a small genus of shrubs 

 and small trees, with red or yellowish drupes fitted for dispersal 

 by frugivorous birds, that is confined mainly to tropical Asia, 

 Australia, and Polynesia. Following Seemann and Drake del 

 Castillo, we may say, that like several other genera of this period, 

 this genus possesses in the tropical Pacific a widely-ranging 

 species, W. indica, that occurs in Hawaii, the Marquesas, Tahiti, 

 Samoa, and Fiji, growing amongst the vegetation immediately 

 behind the beaches and in the plains and open wooded districts 

 inland. In Hawaii it is associated with half a dozen peculiar 

 species, and in Tonga there is also an endemic species. The widely- 

 ranging species has its home in the Indian Archipelago and in the 

 Asiatic mainland, and occurs also in Australia. According to 

 Gray, the American botanist, it is represented by a different 

 variety in almost every group in the tropical Pacific, and it presents 

 us therefore with another example of a polymorphous species 

 which links Polynesia directly with Malaya. As bearing on the 

 dispersal of the genus by birds, it may be added that Mr. Perkins 

 in the Fauna Hawaiiensis speaks of some of the Drepanids and of 

 a species of Phaeornis as feeding at times on the fruits of these 

 plants. 



Peperomia (Piperaceae). — All observers of tropical plant-life 

 will be familiar with this genus of low herbs growing on tree- 

 trunks, on the soil, on rocks, and on stonewalls, and comprising 

 about 500 known species distributed over the warmer regions of 

 the globe and sometimes extending into cooler latitudes. In 

 Polynesia it attains its greatest development in Hawaii, where 

 Hillebrand enumerates about twenty species, of which, after ex- 

 cluding doubtful forms, at least a third must be endemic. Tahiti, 

 Samoa, and Fiji are each known to possess three or four species, 

 of which one is usually restricted to the group. Two species, 

 P. reflexa and P. leptostachya, link together nearly all the groups 

 of the tropical Pacific, including Hawaii, the first cosmopolitan, 

 and the second hailing from North-East Australia and indicating 

 that the genus has entered Polynesia from the west. . . . These 

 plants possess spikes of small berries containing a single seed, 

 and are evidently, like other Piperaceae, dispersed by frugivorous 

 birds. It is to be noted that the presence of a West Indian and 

 Mexican species in the Bermudian caves is attributed by Mr. 

 Hemsley to frugivorous birds (Bot. Chall. Exped., Introd. 49, i. 62). 

 In Vanua Levu they occur on the bare rocky peaks of some of the 

 mountains under such conditions that the seeds could only have 



