461 



crater of Rana Roa and in scattered lava caves at various places 

 about the island. 



The dead and dying twigs of all the trees examined were 

 found more or less infested with a species of bark beetle which 

 seemed to be entirely attached to this one species of growth. 

 None of the other vegetation, native or introduced, was in the 

 least attacked by it. Moreover, the only species of land shell* 

 found on the island, was also found in the channels fonned by 

 this beetle in the dead twigs at the ends of living branches and 

 in the decaying limbs under the trees, and nowhere else. 



We thus have a beetle and a land shell apparently defin- 

 itely attached to a plant of ancient native introduction. Doubt- 

 less the three were brought to Rapanui by the natives at the 

 time of their first settlement on the island. The locating of a 

 land where these three objects occur intimately associated will 

 go far towards solving the location of the ancient home of the 

 native inhabitants, and furnish indirect testimony of a con- 

 vincing and novel character, tending to solve a question of very 

 great interest and importance among students of the origin, life, 

 migration and distribution of the primitive inhabitants of the 

 great Pacific Ocean. 



* Living specimens of the land shells were sent to Dr. Pilsbry, Acad- 

 emy of Natural Science, Philadelphia, for critical study and determination 

 of the species, and to Professor William Clapp of the Museum of Com- 

 parative Zoology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, for study of dentition, etc. 

 Specimens of the plant, beetle and shell will subsequently be deposited 

 in the Bishop Museum. 



