244 



A NATURALIST IN THE PACIFIC 



CHAP. 



We have only to mention the flora of Fiji and those of the 

 adjacent groups of Samoa and Tonga to exclude them from any 

 share in the early era of the Compositse in the Pacific. The pre- 

 vailing adventitious character of the Fijian Compositae is indicated 

 in the fact that the species of the majority of the genera are 

 included by Seemann in his list of Fijian weeds. There are only 

 one or two Fijian Compositae, such as the mountain species of 

 Lagenophora and the littoral species of Wedelia, that merit the 

 special attention of the student of dispersal. So also with Samoa, 

 Reinecke enumerates eight species, of which six are weeds either 

 of aboriginal or of European introduction, the others being the 

 littoral Wedelia above alluded to, and a species of Blumea found 

 also in Fiji. 



Distribution of the Endemic Genera of Composite in the Hawaiian 



Islands. 



We have now, I venture to think, gone far to establish the 

 existence of an early " Composite " flora with mainly American 

 affinities in the Pacific islands, an ancient flora of which only the 

 remnants now occur in the uplands of Hawaii, Tahiti, and Raro- 

 tonga. That the achenes were originally transported in birds' 

 plumage is, as we have seen, probable ; but we are still quite in 

 the dark as to the causes of the subsequent suspension of the 

 means of dispersal and of the resulting period of isolation, during 

 which the original immigrant plants acquired their endemic 

 characters. In our uncertainty, therefore, we will look to Fiji in 

 the hope that in the absence of the early Compositae from that 



