392 A NATURALIST IN THE PACIFIC chap. 



here a genus that repeats the Dammara difficulty of the Western 

 Pacific. 



The trees are common in places in the Vanua Levu forests, 

 where the large, woody, open follicles may be seen lying in numbers 

 on the ground, empty and in all stages of decay. The seeds of one 

 species, near Sterculia vitiensis, were nearly an inch long and sank 

 like stones. The unopened follicles will float for weeks ; but it is 

 evident that Nature does not disperse the genus in this fashion, 

 since the fruits before dehiscence remain on the tree. It is also 

 noteworthy that Gaudichaud, when describing the floating drift of 

 the Molucca seas, refers to the open follicles of two or three species 

 of Sterculia {Bot. ChalL Exped., iii, 279). The fruits never came 

 under my notice in the drift of Fiji. The seeds of a Fijian species 

 examined by me were four-fifths of an inch (2 cm.) long. They had a 

 thin, brittle, outer skin and crustaceous inner test, and, being edible, 

 might attract birds ; but such birds would be ground feeders, like 

 the Megapod, and the Goura pigeon of New Guinea, and the 

 Nicobar pigeon, birds of this habit being rare in Fiji. I should 

 doubt whether the seeds are sufficiently protected to be preserved 

 from injury in a bird's stomach during a long sea-passage ; and they 

 may thus be placed in the same category with the seeds of 

 Myristica, a genus that has also failed to reach Tahiti and Hawaii. 



But the distribution of Sterculia raises other more important 

 questions than that connected with its occurrence in Fiji, which 

 involves an over-sea passage of only 500 or 600 miles. As in 

 Podocarpus amongst the Coniferse, which has a similar distribution 

 in the Western Pacific, we have to explain the existence of the 

 genus in the three great continental masses of Africa, Asia, and 

 America, now separated by oceans several thousands of miles 

 across. Here also we must look far back into the ages for a 

 common centre of diffusion in the extreme north, such as is in a 

 sense suggested by the occurrence of the order in the Eocene beds 

 of Europe. 



As showing unmistakably that Fiji received its species from the 

 Old World, it may be observed that one of its trees, Sterculia 

 vitiensis, is very closely allied to S. foetida, widely spread in 

 tropical Asia, in Malaya, and Australia, as well as in Africa. 



TricJiospermum (Sterculiaceae) 



There are only two species of this tree recorded in the Index 

 Kewensis, one in Java, and one in Fiji as well as in Samoa. The 



