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to prepare a list of all of the plants which they knew. j\'Iany of the 

 older natives were known to have a wide knowledge of the plants, 

 particularly those with food or medicinal properties. The natives 

 gathered in groups in the various villages and each person con- 

 tributed the names of as many plants as he knew while one who 

 could write would list them. In this manner more than a dozen lists, 

 some of which included more than a thousand different native 

 names, were obtained. Naturally , there were innumerable duplica- 

 tions and it was necessary to match lists and combine names when 

 applied to the same species. From the list thus secured it was pos- 

 sible to seek those species not already collected and to locate, with 

 the aid of a competent guide, a number of species which would 

 likely have otherwise been overlooked. Finally, prizes were given 

 to natives who could bring plants which were rare and of which 

 specimens had not already been obtained. Most of those submitted 

 had already been collected but a few interesting additions were 

 secured in that manner. It was interesting to note that in many 

 instances the natives employed a workable form of binomial nomen- 

 clature to designate the various species, using descriptive specific 

 terms of color, habitat, leaf characters, etc. One wonders that 

 professional botanists waited until the time of Linnaeus before 

 adopting a similar system. 



As might be expected, the endemic species are comparatively 

 few. Practically all of them occur also in Samoa, Tonga, Raratonga 

 or other islands of that general area. The total number of all species 

 collected was found to be less than 500 of which something less 

 than 50 percent are native. Considering the fact that there is little 

 variation in the thin soil, that the topography of the island is flat 

 and low, and that there is no surface water to furnish freshwater 

 habitats of stream or marsh, one should probably not expect a 

 larger number. 



DePauw University 

 Green CASTLE, Indiana 



