Ixvi j Appendix. 
On the Botany of Tahiti. 
Communicated by the Hon. W. B. D. MANTELL, F.G.S. 
Manuscript (Author unknown) found amongst the papers of the late William 
Swainson, F.R.S. 
[Read before the Wellington Philosophical Society, 12th November, 1870.] 
I HAVE somewhere seen the observation that “the botany of islands is 
particularly interesting”; this may be the case, but I think it must be 
construed merely to mean that the study of the plants is interesting, for 
assuredly in general the plants of isolated islands are in themselves particularly 
uninteresting, so far as their mere beauty is concerned, and, for myself, I must 
confess that I always feel a sensation of fatigue at the idea of hunting out the 
name of a plant which does not recommend itself by beauty, utility, odour, or 
curiosity of structure. In the botany of Tahiti I do not know of more than 
three Phzenogamous plants peculiar to the island which deserve cultivation for 
their beauty or utility ; the ferns possess many handsome species, but nothing 
very remarkable, unless it is in one which is spiny, but which I have never 
seen, and in another (Angiopteris erecta) for its enormous size. The 
Lycopodiacee are very numerous and beautiful, like all the tribe, and in some 
measure make up by their abundance for the paucity of flowering plants; 
there are on Tahiti and the adjoining island of Morea about sixteen or seven- 
teen species, and perhaps one hundred and sixty of ferns. Of flowering 
plants I cannot find more than three hundred in all the catalogues put 
together, and, doubtless, many plants will have been counted twice, or even 
three times, in this computation, because many plants would be called different 
names by the different botanists who found them; and, moreover, I have 
included every common plant (such as Hibiscus rosa-sinensis), even although it 
may be well known by the natives not to be indigenous. The list is also 
swelled by those common plants which are found on all the tropical islands of 
each ocean, and which in. reality belong to no country in particular, as I see 
in the list published in the “Ann. Nat. Hist." by Professor Henslow, of the 
plants of the Keeling Islands, that all the species common to those islands and 
Timor are also to be found on the shores of the small islands about Tahiti, 
except Acacia farnesiana ; an Acacia is found, but it is not farnesiana, but 
an unarmed, downy species, which I have never seen in flower. There is also 
a much larger species, with leaves resembling those of lophantha, but with 
pods four times as large. Garlandinea bonduc is scarce ; Ochrosia parviflora 
is not marked as being at Timor, but is abundant here. 
The littoral plants found here, in addition to those of the Keelings, are two 
species Pandanus, Pisonia inermis and procera, one of which was probably the tree 
which Mr. Darwin saw at the Keelings, and which attains a diameter of five or 
