ii 



AVIFAUNA OF LAYSAN. 



water in the centre, and coral bottom. On the shores of this lagoon I found salt of good 

 quality. 



" There are (1859) five palm-trees on the island, 15 feet high, and I collected twenty-five 

 varieties of plants, some of them splendid flowering shrubs, very fragrant, resembling plants 

 I have seen in gardens in Honolulu. I saw on the beach trunks of immense trees, probably 

 drifted from the N.W. coast of America. The island contains about 50 acres of good soil. 

 It is covered with a variety of land- and sea-birds ; some of the land-varieties are small and 

 of beautiful plumage. Birds' eggs were abundant. 



« There is a very small deposit of guano on the island, but not of sufficient quantity to 

 warrant any attempts to get it. Pug a well and found very good water. The reefs here 

 abound in fish and turtle." 



13 ut a loiur time before, in 1834, the well-known German traveller and ornithologist, 

 P. II. von Kittlitz gave, in the ' Museum Senckcnbergianum,' vol. i. pp. 117 et seq., a highly 

 interesting account of Laysan and some of the other islands, and a list of all the birds that 

 were observed. 



Unfortunately Herr von Kittlitz was on board the ' Senjawin' and not on the 'Moller,' 

 which visited the islands in March 1828, "at the commencement of the breeding-season 

 of the innumerable birds which live on these lonely spots, and are especially plentiful on the 

 small Mat island that was then discovered for the first time, and was named Moller, after 

 the ship." 



"Unfortunately," Herr von Kittlitz proceeds to say, "nobody on board the 'Moller' 

 was able to do anything of importance for natural history ; but the ship's surgeon, Herr C. 

 Isenbeck, did his best to bear all he saw in mind, and to prepare and keep as many of the 

 birds, which were mostly caught by hand, as the very unfavourable circumstances allowed 

 him to do. The following notes are written down from his and his companions' reports 

 sriven to me when we met later in Kamtschatka." 



I here translate the most important information given by Kittlitz, I. c. : — 

 "The crew of the 'Moller' did not land on the rocky island of Necker, but they saw 

 enormous quantities of different birds around it. They were too far off to recognize the 

 species. 



"Herr Isenbeck landed on Gardner, although the landing was very difficult and 

 dangerous, and a very small part of the island only was accessible. Most of the birds kept 

 to the inaccessible high part, and therefore very few eggs were found. 



"On March 12 (21) Herr Isenbeck landed on Moller (Laysan), which was originally a 

 coral-island with a long reef round it. It seems that it was raised higher and became a real 

 island from the accumulations of the birds' excrements. It is covered with a strong bushy 

 kind of grass and partly with low shrubs, between which a few pigmy palms had grown up. 

 Although there was no fresh water on the island, there were not only sea-birds but also 

 several land-birds, as the following list will show. Most of the larger birds were already 

 breeding, or had paired at least. 



" On the 22nd of March (April 3), when on Lisiansky Island, they again found all the 

 larger birds as on Laysan, and mostly breeding; but none were found that they had not seen 

 on Laysan. 



