8 A NATURALIST IN THE PACIFIC chap. 



the Fijian, Tahitian, and Hawaiian forests, where the seeds and 

 " stones " are large and heavy, measuring often as much as a 

 quarter of an inch (6 mm.), and sometimes nearly an inch (25 mm.) 

 in size. The reader will be surprised to learn how little " size " has 

 determined the distribution of seeds and fruits in the Pacific. He 

 will have to appeal to the habits of pebble-swallowing of the Dodo^ 

 the Solitaire, the Goura pigeon, the Nicobar pigeon, &c., if he 

 desires to find a parallel in the habits of birds. 



It is here assumed that the reader is already acquainted with 

 the principles involved in a discussion of island-floras, principles 

 clearly laid down in the writings of Hooker, Wallace, Hemsley, 

 and others. As a general rule in an island or in a group of islands 

 where there are a large number of plants not found elsewhere, 

 there is also a large endemic element in the avifauna, and where 

 none of the plants are peculiar, endemic birds are either few 

 or wanting. As an example of the first we may mention Hawaii, 

 and Iceland affords an instance of the second. But there is no 

 hard and fast rule connecting the endemic character of the plants 

 and birds of an island with its distance from other regions. Even 

 the small group of Fernando Noronha, lying only some 200 miles 

 off the coast of Brazil, possesses its peculiar birds and its peculiar 

 plants ; and we can there witness the singular spectacle, as 

 described by Mr. Ridley, of an endemic bird, a frugivorous dove, 

 engaged in scattering the seeds of endemic plants over the little 

 group. This is the only fruit-eating bird in the islands, remarks 

 the same botanist in the Journal of the Linnean Society (vol. 27, 

 1 891); and "when one sees the number of endemic species with 

 edible fruits, one is tempted to wonder if it were possible that they 

 were all introduced by this single species of dove, or whether other 

 frugivorous birds may not at times have wandered to these shores." 

 This inter-island dispersal in a particular group of peculiar plants 

 by peculiar birds is a common spectacle in the Pacific. The con- 

 trast between the large number of plant-genera possessing fruits 

 that would be dispersed by frugivorous birds and the poverty of 

 fruit-eating birds in the avifauna is well displayed in Hawaii. 



The island of St. Helena would seem to offer an exception 

 to the rule that endemic birds and endemic plants go together, 

 since, though its flora possesses a very large endemic element, 

 there are scarcely any endemic or even indigenous birds recorded 

 from the island. We can never know, however, how much of the 

 original fauna disappeared with the destruction of the forests. It 

 would nevertheless appear that but few of the genera possessing 



