2o6 A NATURALIST IN THE PACIFIC chap. 



setting the floral economy altogether. The history of man's most 

 troubled epoch would not be more full of catastrophes and great 

 events than the history of the plants of this Pacific island. Yet 

 through all these changes the winds and currents have been quietly 

 carrying on their work, bringing the same plants to beach and hill- 

 side that they did before the age of unrest began. 



The monotonous character of an island flora that has been 

 supplied by the winds and currents can be readily imagined. For 

 their variety the floras of the Pacific islands are mainly indebted 

 to the bird, the great disturber of the peace of the plant world. 

 We cannot attach too much importance to the contrast in the 

 results produced by these several agencies in stocking a Pacific 

 island with its plants. On the one hand we have the tranquil 

 working through the ages of the winds and currents. On the other 

 hand there has been the revolutionary influence of the bird. One 

 cannot doubt that many of the species of flowering plants now 

 growing on the beach and many of the ferns on the upper 

 mountain-slopes have witnessed changes within the forest-zone of 

 the island, such as an antediluvian might record if he had lived 

 through the ages to the present time. 



Now, what are these changes .■' How has the bird acted un- 

 consciously such a determining part ? These are questions which 

 I will endeavour in some way to answer as one picks one's path 

 slowly through the various epochs in the plant-history of these 

 islands. We already are fairly well acquainted with the beginnings 

 of a flora either on a coral atoll or on an ordinary tropical beach. 

 What we have yet to learn is the subsequent history of the flora. 

 When Dr. Treub undertook, in 1886, his now celebrated examina- 

 tion of the new flora of Krakatoa after the great eruption, he com- 

 menced a series of observations which will no doubt be prolonged 

 into future centuries. Botanists a hundred and two hundred years 

 hence will complete a long chain of observations which will be 

 unique as a record of plant-colonisation ; and science is deeply 

 indebted to Prof. Penzig for making, in 1897, the second examina- 

 tion of the new flora. Though deprived of the valuable record 

 that future generations will possess for Krakatoa, we yet have at 

 our disposal in the completed process displayed by many a Pacific 

 island a means of working backward and in a sense completing 

 the history. 



In order to attack this problem I have mainly confined myself 



to the Fijian, Tahitian, and Hawaiian floras, taking the three archi- 



lagoes just named as the centres of the regions in which they 



