XXIV THE FIJIAN CONIFER.E 297 



Being included in the Fijian area, the scanty mountain-flora of 

 Samoa may be here referred to. As in Fiji, the endemic genera 

 of Compositae and LobeHacese are not to be found, but we find in 

 the central elevated district of Savaii, which rises to over 5,000 feet 

 above the sea, a peculiar species of Vaccinium (4,900 feet), the 

 Antarctic Nertera depressa (4,000 feet), and two species of Wein- 

 mannia, a genus hailing probably from high southern latitudes. 



The Fijian Conifers. 



It has been found most convenient to discuss here these 

 interesting plants, which belong in a general sense to the mountain- 

 flora of this archipelago. That which the Fijian flora loses in 

 interest in the eyes of the student of plant-dispersal in not 

 possessing the mysterious Composite and Lobeliaceous genera 

 of Hawaii and Tahiti, it regains in the possession of its genera 

 of Conifers. If he felt loth to apply his empirical principles 

 to the above-named Hawaiian and Tahitian endemic genera, he 

 feels more than uneasy when he comes to deal with the three 

 Coniferous genera of Fiji, Dammara (Agathis), Podocarpus, and 

 Dacrydium. 



These three genera represent an order that has not found a 

 home either in Tahiti or in East Polynesia generally, or in the 

 more distant Hawaii ; and they present at first sight in their 

 existence in Fiji a powerful argument in favour of the previous 

 continental condition of the islands of the Western Pacific. But in 

 advocating this view we should remember that it involves the 

 original continuity of the Fijian land-area, not only with the 

 neighbouring islands of the New Hebrides and of New Caledonia 

 where these genera alike occur, but also with New Zealand, 

 Tasmania, and Australia, where they sometimes attain a great 

 development. 



In Fiji these trees often chiefly form the forests of the larger 

 islands, extending in the moister regions from near the sea to the 

 mountain-tops, and being often abundant on the great mountain- 

 ridges of the interior. It may be at once remarked that, viewed 

 merely from the standpoint of dispersal, there is no great difficulty 

 in regarding it as probable that the seeds of Podocarpus and 

 Dacrydium have been dispersed by frugivorous birds over tracts of 

 ocean 500 or 600 miles across. Dammara, however, so far as my 

 Fijian observations show, possesses none of the means of dispersal 



