276 A NATURALIST IN THE PACIFIC chap. 



Captain Carmichael, in the instance of Acsena sanguisorbas on 

 Tristan da Cunha, observes that it overruns the low ground. Its 

 burr-Hke fruit, as he describes, " fixes itself on the slightest touch 

 into one's clothes, and falling into a hundred pieces covers one all 

 over with an unseemly crust of prickly seeds not to be got rid of 

 without infinite labour" {Trans. Linn. Soc, xii. 483, 1818). Both 

 Mr. Moseley (Wallace's Island Life, p. 250) and Dr. Kidder {Bull. 

 U.S. Nat. Mus., 2) refer to the burrowing habits of the Petrels, 

 Puffins, and other sea-birds amongst the vegetation covering the 

 ground in Tristan da Cunha, Marion Island, Kerguelen, &c., in 

 places where Acsena, amongst other plants, thrives. Mr. Moseley 

 remarks that the fruits of this genus stick like burrs to feathers, 

 and he looks to sea-birds for the dispersal of this and similar 

 plants over the ocean. He especially notes that the Petrels and 

 other seafowl burrow and breed high up the mountain-slopes of 

 tropical islands as in Tahiti, Viti Levu, Hawaii, and Jamaica. . . . 

 It should be noted in the case of the Hawaiian endemic species 

 that it has been found only on two mountain tops ; and that 

 however active may be the dispersal of the genus in south 

 temperate latitudes now, the Hawaiian Islands lie outside the 

 present area of dispersal. 



The next mountain genus I will specially refer to is Lageno- 

 phora, one of the Compositse. The solitary Hawaiian endemic 

 species, L. mauiensis, is restricted to the summit of Mount Eeka, 

 in Maui. In the mountains of Vanua Levu, Fiji, another peculiar 

 species, L. pickeringii, has been found ; and there is a species, 

 L. petiolata, in the Kermadec Islands (Hooker, mjourn. Linn. Soc, 

 i. 127) ; but the genus is chiefly characteristic of Australia, New 

 Zealand, and temperate South America, one species occurring 

 both in Fuegia and Tristan da Cunha. The genus has no pappus ; 

 but Hooker in the case of the Kermadec species considered that 

 the " viscid fruit " favoured its dispersal ; and this may probably 

 be true of the genus. 



With regard to the capacity for dispersal of the seeds of 

 Plantago, it may be pointed out that the seeds of Plantago major, 

 P. lanceolata, &c., become coated with a mucilaginous material 

 when wetted. In 1892, when experimenting on these plants, I 

 found that the wetted seeds adhered firmly to a feather, so that it 

 could be blown about without their becoming detached. Species 

 of Plantago are so characteristic of the "alpine" floras of the 

 summits of lofty mountains in the tropics, as in Java and many 

 other regions, that the mode of dispersal has always been a subject 



