144 H. B. GUPrY, M.B., ON 



with him. Nor is there reason to suppose that Nature has 

 acted cliiEferently in the warmer latitudes. Aboriginal man 

 could have found but poor sustenance in the virgin forests 

 of Fiji and of Tahiti ; and, as far as I know, there are no 

 accounts of any island possessing the banana, the yam, the 

 taro, and the breadfruit, which can be shown to have been 

 never occupied by man. In lat. 20° 30' in the South Atlantic, 

 South Trinidad presents us witli an island, in all probability 

 never inhabited, which when discovered was clothed with 

 tree-ferns and arboreous vegetation, but possessed, as far as 

 is indicated in Hemsley's Botany of the " Challenger,^'' none of 

 the useful edible plants of the adjoining mainland of Brazil. 

 It is probable that the seeded mountain plantain, Musa trog- 

 lodytarum, is truly indigenous in Polynesia ; but no one has 

 ever suggested that the seedless cxdtivated bananas have 

 been produced by man's art in this region from an indigenous 

 plant. In truth, in the light of the fact that JMendana in 

 1595 found not only bananas, but also pigs, hens, and pump- 

 kins in the Marquesas, such a supposition seems quite gra- 

 tuitous. It has been suggested by Dole in the case of the 

 Breadfruit of Hawaii, though I do not remember that he is 

 countenanced by Hillebrand, that the cuttings necessary to 

 propagate the tree in that group would not have withstood 

 a long sea voyage. This difficulty, however, was surmounted 

 by the Maoris when they carried the paper-mulberry to 

 New Zealand. Excepting perhaps in the case of Tacca 

 pinnatifida, which is a common littoral plant, I have little 

 doubt that all the tuber-plants and other edible plants which 

 are cultivated both in Polynesia and the Indian Archipelago 

 have been introduced by man into the former region ; and 

 here I would include the banana, and the breadfruit ; the 

 sweet-potato ; amongst the yams, Dioscorea alata, D. sativa, 

 D. 2>(intap]iyUa, D. aculeata, etc. ; amongst the aroids, Anxor- 

 phopliallus campanulatus, Coloeasia antiquormn or the common 

 taro, Alocasia macrorrhiza (Sch.), etc.; and amongst the fruit- 

 trees Spondias dulcis, Eugenia malaccensi?, etc. 



Of the antiquity of the cultivated plants in Polynesia and 

 in the other regions of the Pacific the number of varieties 

 is sufficient evidence, even although many of them are not 

 varieties in the eye of the botanist. Taking the banana in 

 its most general sense, it may be noted that Banks and 

 Solander enumerated as many as 28 varieties in Tahiti. Ellis, 

 who takes the native view of the matter, places the number 

 at about 50. Seemann distinguished 18 kinds of bananas in 



