32 "ALBATROSS" TROPICAL PACIFIC EXPEDITION. 



An atoll like Rangiroa, and similar islands in the Paumotus, supplies 

 an abundance of food for the few natives living upon it. In fact, there are 

 not enough natives in the group to collect the copra and prepare it for 

 export. 



The occurrence of young cocoanut trees on the isolated islets and bars 

 formed on the weather side of the reef flats of many of the atolls would 

 seem to indicate that cocoanuts can be carried a great distance and take 

 root. TJiough Dana, while acknowledging that the cocoanut is well adapted 

 for marine transportation,^ is of the opinion that " there is no known evi- 

 dence that an island never inhabited has been found supplied with cocoa- 

 nut trees," yet it is also evident that some of the atolls of the Paumotus and 

 Marshall Islands as well as other regions ai-e sufficiently near and so placed 

 with reference to the favorable transportation of cocoanuts by the trades, 

 that it seems most probable that the cocoanuts have been successfully 

 transported by the ocean from one atoll to another. So that cocoanuts 

 probably do not form an exception to the extensive transportation by marine 

 agencies of the many plants which characterize the scanty vegetation of the 

 Paumotus and other Pacific islands, — vegetation which becomes more luxu- 

 riant in proportion as we go west. 



Dana^ has already called attention to the small number of plants 

 which characterize the Paumotus ; the two most characteristic trees and 

 shrubs being a Pisonia and a Scaevola, a fleshy plant with large leaves which 

 grows well on the sea face of the atolls in the poorest coral soil and exposed 

 to the full strength of the winds, and usually forms the outer belt of pro- 

 tective vegetation of the plantations. Mangroves do not play an important 

 part in the vegetation of the Paumotus. 



1 Loc. cit., p. 327. 



^ A list of the principal plants has been given by Dana (loc. cit., p. 326), " not more than twenty- 

 eight to thirty species." 



