302 A NATURALIST IN THE PACIFIC chap. 



carpus spicata is closely allied to the South American P. andina, 

 he does not imply that the two regions are in touch with each 

 other though some 5,000 to 6,000 miles of ocean intervene. One 

 is prepared to credit these seeds with a capacity of dispersal by 

 birds over tracts of sea such as the extent of ocean separating 

 New Caledonia and New Zealand, which are some 900 miles 

 apart ; but one hesitates to admit that frugivorous birds could 

 carry them across the Southern Ocean. If we assign a home in 

 the high latitudes of the northern hemisphere to a genus that was 

 well represented in Europe in the Tertiary period, a movement of 

 migration southward would explain most of the difficulties in its 

 present distribution. The great vertical range of some of the 

 species leads us to attribute a corresponding power of adaptation 

 to the genus in respect of widely different climates. Thus, 

 according to Stapf, the vertical range of P. bracteata in the Malay 

 Archipelago extends, including varieties, from the coast to an 

 altitude of 12,000 feet. With such a capacity for adaptation, 

 migrations of the genus would be rendered easy over the globe. 



Dacrydium. — It may happen that some additional light on 

 the mystery of the Fijian Coniferse may be afforded by Dacrydium 

 elatum, a tree that occurs not only in Fiji, but in Further India and 

 in Malaya. Pilger confirms Seemann's view in his identification of 

 the Fijian tree, and this opinion is, in the main, shared by Stapf 

 This species, so to speak, affords us a point d'appui in the history 

 of the distribution of the genus in the Western Pacific. This 

 distribution somewhat resembles that of Dammara in extending 

 from New Zealand (its principal centre) to Malaya and Further 

 India ; but, unlike Dammara, Dacrydium is represented in America 

 by a solitary species in South Chile. Of the sixteen species 

 enumerated by Pilger, seven belong to New Zealand, four to New 

 Caledonia, three to Malaya, one to Tasmania, and one to Chile. 

 The seeds are, as a rule, smaller than those of Podocarpus, and on 

 account of their somewhat similar structure would serve as bird- 

 food, and might be distributed in this fashion. Yet the genus has 

 been only recorded from Fiji, and is not only unrepresented in 

 Hawaii and Tahiti, but is also not known from the Tongan and 

 Samoan groups that belong to the Fijian floral region of the 

 Pacific. Capacities for dispersal appear meaningless here, espe- 

 cially when we have regard to the solitary American species, 

 Dacrydium fonkii, that as a shrub finds a refuge in the bleak 

 region of Southern CJiile. 



