On the Botany of Tahiti. Ixvii 
six feet, with particularly soft wood. ` 'The wood is considerably softer than the 
lower part of a cabbage stump, but it is nevertheless used by the natives for 
canoes when they cannot get any better wood.  Paritium tricuspis, Ximeria 
elliptica, a Capparis with angular fruit, Гротоа pes-caprae, and several others. 
Convolvulus braziliensis, Agati coccinea, Erythrina indica, Hernandia sonora, 
Morinda citrifolia, Suriana maritima, Heliotropium aromaticum, a Mucuna, 
Sophora, tomentosa, Canavalia littoralis, with Barringtonia speciosa, very rare. 
A little further from the sea will in some places be seen a considerable 
variety of plants, the most conspicuous of which are Barringtonia, Terminalia 
glabrata (very rare), Calophyllum inophyllum in stony places, Ficus tinctoria 
and prolixa, Spondias dulcis, and Inocarpus edulis, mixed with great quantities 
of Hibiscus tiliaceus and tricuspis (Paritium), and more rarely Thespisia 
populnea and Aluerites triloba. In some districts there are also found in this 
region whole woods of the Ito, Casuarina equisetifolia. 
In the more cultivated parts of Tahiti all these plants have been nearly 
exterminated, and their room is filled by the bread-fruit, cocoa-nut, and orange 
trees, with an underwood composed entirely of the guava. This plant, which 
has been introduced within the memory of man, is now the most common 
plant and the most complete weed in the island. It covers the whole of the 
low land, and also the hills to the height of about 500 feet, forming a dismal- 
looking scrub of about ten feet high; above the height of 500 feet it has not yet 
been able to contend successfully with the thick growth of fern and higher 
still the native forest, but you see it springing up in every open spot in every 
part of the island: never was there an instance of a plant so completely 
taking possession of a country. Four other exotic plants are found among the 
guavas—Cassia purpurea, Asclepias carassavica in moist spots, an Indigofera 
with long spikes of copper-coloured very small flowers, and a blue flowered 
Indian Crotalaria, of which I forget the specific name ; this last is the only 
one which accompanies the guava in its excursions up-hil. These four 
plants form almost all the common weeds of waste places. The weeds of 
cultivated soils are very few in number, and may likewise have been intro- 
duced ; the most common are a Behmeria and a Phyllanthus. 
After passing the region of guavas the hills are generally entirely covered 
with Gleichenia hermanni, growing on the steep sides so strongly that it is 
almost impossible to pass through it. Occasionally interspersed are bushes of 
Metrosideros villosa, and, as you get still higher, M. lucida (2) in much greater 
abundance. 
At about 800 to 1,000 feet the Gleichenia becomes almost lost in the scrub ` 
of Metrosideros lucida, Dodonaea viscosa (?), Melastoma taitense, and a species of 
Vaccinium which was called by Bertuo Arbutus mucronata. These plants are 
bound together by two large species of Lycopodium, and underneath them are 
