318 



as are found in the fringing reefs at Kewalo and Waikiki, and 

 generally where coral reefs lie near the surface. These pits 

 are of varying sizes. They may be only a foot or so wide, 

 even fifteen feet in depth and in the larger ones there are 

 traces of the bread-fruit, the paper mulberry, the ti, yams, 

 noni, native sugarcane, and other plants such as Tpomoea tuber- 

 cuJata ancl Cassia Gaudlchaudii, which may have been under 

 cultivation. 



From the first old reef, which seems to lie near where the 

 contour of 40 feet is located on the topographical map, the 

 surface slopes gradually down to the sea, successive reef 

 formations may be noted. On some portions of the plain, par- 

 ticularly toward the east, the surface has sufficient soil for the 

 cultivation of sugar-cane, and in other places sisal has been 

 planted, but west from Ewa Mill and from about a half mile 

 south of the Oahu Railway and Land Company's tracks to the 

 sea, the surface is covered with a growth of glue, algaroba 

 and scrubby lantana, in places quite dense, but generally a 

 straggling growth on account of the scanty rainfall. This 

 region is utilized to some extent as rough pasture for cattle 

 and many colonies of bees are maintained where the algaroba 

 trees are denser and larger. 



Among the growth of algaroba and glue are the scanty 

 remnants of the lowland flora which furnish a refuge for a 

 remnant of th* old lowland fauna of insects. Among these 

 are a variety of Myoporum Sandii'i cense, Erythrina monos- 

 perma, sandal wood, Acryanthes splendens, Capparis Sand- 

 wichimm, PoHulaca villosa, Sida, and perhaps most important 

 from the entomological point of view, is the Euphorbia, which 

 'My. Forbes considers a variety of E. multiformis. It is to 

 this plant which Neoclytarlus euphorbiae and some other low- 

 land endemic insects are attached. 



This Eupliovbia is a low, freely branching shrub which has 

 a short trunk, rarely more than an inch in diameter, which 

 rapidly disappears into a multitude of branches and twigs, 



