Ixvi Appendix. 



On the Botany of Tahiti. 



Comnmnicated 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, \2th 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 Phsenogamous 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 [Angioioteris erecta) for its enormous size. The 

 Lycopodiacese 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 difierent 

 names by the difierent botanists who found them ; and, moreover, I have 

 included every common plant (such as Hibiscus rosa-sinensis), even although it 

 naay 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 lophantlia, but with 

 pods four times as large. Garlandinea honduc is scarce ; Ochrosia parvijiora 

 is not marked as being at Timor, but is abiindant here. 



The littoral plants found here, in addition to those of the Keelings, are two 

 species Pandanus, PAsonia inermis andproce?T6, one of which was probably the tree 

 which Mr. Darwin saw at the Keelings, and which attains a diameter of five or 



