138 A NATURALIST IN THE PACIFIC chap. 



is, however, evident from its distribution over the islands of this 

 archipelago that it possesses or has possessed some means of 

 inter-island dispersal, and since it is not of much service to the 

 aborigines we must look therefore to the bird. 



In the instance of the genus Tacca there is in Fiji an inland 

 species, T. maculata, associated with a wide-ranging beach species, 

 T. pinnatifida, which also grows inland. The first-named is 

 recorded from the north coast of Australia and from Samoa, and 

 though, unlike the beach plant, its seeds are unfitted for dispersal by 

 currents (see Chapter II.), they might be distributed by birds. Dr. 

 Reinecke describes another inland species from Samoa, T. samoensis. 

 The beach plant, T. pinnatifida, grows so typically (sometimes side 

 by side with T. maculata) in the inland plains of Fiji that one 

 would not be justified, apart from questions of affinity, in regarding 

 it as the parent form of inland species in the Pacific islands. 



For food and other purposes Tacca pinnatifida is or was much 

 valued by the Pacific islanders, and it grows so abundantly that 

 cultivation is rarely practised. That the Polynesians have aided 

 the currents in the distribution of the plant there can be no doubt, 

 and this is particularly indicated by its occurrence in Hawaii. The 

 genus contains ten or a dozen species, of which at least three are 

 peculiar to America ; but T. pinnatifida, the characteristic shore- 

 plant of the Old World, and according to Schimper the only one 

 that can be so designated, is not found in America, vv^here, as far as 

 I can gather, there is no widely-spread beach species dispersed by 

 the currents from which the peculiar species could have been 

 derived. In the case of the Pacific species, however, it should be 

 noted that I am not endeavouring to prove the improbability of the 

 inland species having been derived from the coast species in other 

 regions, as in Australia, but that my point is to show there is 

 no reason to suppose that this has taken place in the Pacific. 

 There is no difficulty in attributing the dispersal of inland species 

 to birds ; and we are therefore not called on to connect them with 

 the beach plants. 



Section II 



This division includes those genera where the littoral species 

 has apparently given rise to one or more inland species and both 

 still exist in the same group of islands. Two genera alone, Vigna 

 and Premna, come into this category. The first-named seems to 

 present a good case for the derivation of an inland from a coast 



