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Section D.— BIOLOGY. 

 President of the Section — Rev. H. B. Teisteam, M.A., LL.D., D.D., F.R.S. 



THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14. 



[For the President's Address see p. 784.] 

 The following Reports and Papers were read :^ 

 1. Report on the Zoology of the Sandwich Islands. — See Reports, p. 523. 



2. On the Zoology of the Sandwich Islands. By D. Sharp, F.B.S. 



The islands were formerly supposed to be rich in plant and comparatively poor 

 in animal life. But the progress of knowledge is modifying this latter view. In 

 1880 Wallace in ' Island Life ' furnished the following statistics as to this archi- 

 pelago — viz. : birds, 43 species, 24 of them peculiar to the islands ; land and fresh- 

 water mollusca, 300 or 400 species, all peculiar ; insects, scarcely anything known ; 

 plants, 689 species, 377 peculiar. 



After one year's investigation by the committees of the British Association and 

 of the Royal Society, and incorporating the recent results of the work of private 

 naturalists, the figures are : birds, 78 species, 57 of them peculiar ; land and fresh- 

 water mollusca, 475 species, all peculiar ; insects, 1,000 species, 700 of then* peculiar ; 

 plants (according to Hillebrand), 999 species, 653 peculiar (many of those not 

 peculiar being introduced by man). 



But the investigations of the committees show that these results are very in- 

 complete, at any rate in the case of the insects, which cannot be estimated at less 

 than 3,000 species, 2,500 or 2,600 of the number being peculiar. 



These numbers in the case of the fauna are less than those of approximately 

 similar areas in less insular parts. Devonshire has 84 resident species of birds and 

 30 summer migrants. The insects amount to about 6,000 species, and the land and 

 fresh-water mollusca to 97 species, the vascular plants being about the same in 

 number as those of the Sandwich Islands. 



But there has already been very great extinction in this latter area, much of it 

 probably even before the discovery and appropriation of the islands by civilised 

 man. 



The working of the British Association and of the Royal Society committees 

 seems to oflPer the only chance of investigating the fauna. The native creatures 

 are extremely difficult to find, and the usual inducements to sportsmen and collectors 

 are wanting ; while the small population and the absence of great centres of intel- 

 lectual activity in the islands render it very improbable that the work will be 

 accomplished by residents in the archipelago, though these might give very valuable 

 assistance. 



