338 A NATURALIST IN THE PACIFIC chap. 



of Elaeocarpus, the drupes become dry and almost sapless. As 

 remarked in Note 68, this same feature is to be noticed in the 

 fruits of some of the Hawaiian endemic genera. This, of course, 

 would be quite in accord with what we should expect from the 

 standpoint of dispersal. 



I will conclude these remarks on Elaeocarpus with a reference 

 to the similarity of its distribution with that of Freycinetia. Both 

 genera are at home in the temperate rain-forests of New Zealand 

 and in the tropical rain-forests of the Pacific islands and of 

 Malaya. Their capacities for dispersal are so different and so 

 unequal, the dispersal of Freycinetia being seemingly so much 

 more readily effected, that we can only suppose that time has long 

 since discounted any special advantage one genus possesses over 

 the other as regards distribution. 



DODON^A (Sapindacese). 



This genus of small trees and shrubs includes between fifty and 

 sixty known species, of which about forty are confined to Australia ; 

 but a few species are found over the tropical and subtropical regions 

 of the world, extending sometimes into temperate latitudes. There 

 are, it seems, only three species known from the oceanic groups of 

 the tropical Pacific : one, the cosmopolitan Dodonaea viscosa, that 

 occurs in every island of volcanic formation ; and two others 

 associated with it in the Hawaiian Group, to which they are 

 restricted. We have thus repeated in this genus what is true 

 of several other genera in Hawaii, such as Metrosideros and 

 Wikstroemia, namely, the occurrence in that group of a widely- 

 ranging species accompanied by other species peculiar to those 

 islands. In the case of Dodonsea in Hawaii we should not expect 

 to find it very difficult to connect the endemic species with the 

 widely-ranging D. viscosa, which is a very variable species. The 

 extreme forms in different parts of the world are so different in 

 character that Bentham viewed this species as probably including 

 the whole of the extra-Australian species, excepting perhaps the 

 Hawaiian endemic species and one or two South African and 

 Mexican plants {Bot. Chall. Exped., iii. 136). 



Of the two Hawaiian peculiar species, one, Dodonaea eriocarpa, 

 is a mountain shrub found in most of the large islands and occur- 

 ring sometimes at elevations of 6,000 to 8,000 feet. The other 

 species, D. stenoptera, is, according to Hillebrand, a very distinct 

 species found only on Molokai. Bentham was only acquainted 



