PLANT LIFE IN A TROPICAL ISLAND. 



9 



Our bridle-track reaches its highest point only a few hundred feet 

 below the actual summit of Mount Victoria. This is one of the few 

 points in Fiji which exhibit the botanical character of a " wet mountain 

 forest " — i.e. one of the few marked by the occurrence there of plants 

 in any way peculiar to such mountain-tops. Moreover, in Fiji this 

 " montane flora " — at least, as far as flowering plants are concerned — 

 has only a very few species. Miss Gibbs not long ago published an 

 excellent paper in the " Journal of the Linnean Society " on the 

 " montane flora " of Fiji; and, as a matter of fact, the writer's material 

 for this paper was gathered almost exclusively on and about Mount 

 Victoria and along the route which we have supposed ourselves to 

 follow. It is rather remarkable that, to the best of ray belief, if Miss 

 Gibbs had been able to examine the other mountain-tops she would 

 have found on these certainly a few, but only a few, plants different 

 from those which she records from the top of Mount Victoria. 



From the pass on Mount Victoria the bridle-track leads down the 

 northern slope and towards the sea. In fact, it passes through the 

 dry area of Fiji, the vegetation of which is, on the whole, of a very 

 different character from that which we saw when coming up the 

 southern slope. Henceforth we go through country where trees are 

 scarce, and for the most part confined to the stream-heads and to the 

 narrow gullies through which the streams run down to the reed-covered 

 plains which lie between the mountains and the sea. The mountain 

 slopes and the plains, wherever they have not yet been taken into 

 cultivation, are for the most part covered with reeds, often as tall 

 as a man, and in other places with our common bracken [Pteris 

 aquilina), which is one of the plants which has spread into most 

 parts of the world. Here and there there are patches of many isolated 

 plants of Casuarina (of a different species and habit from that which 

 we saw. on the other side of the mountain), and also straggling screw 

 pines (Pandanus) of the ordinary type. In other places there are con- 

 siderable numbers of very tall and stately Cycads {Cycas circinalis) ; 

 •again, in other places, there are considerable patches of small, stunted 

 trees or large bushes — it is a little difficult to know which to call them — 

 of such things as the " bottle-brush tree " (Metrosideros polymorpha), 

 the abundant flowers of which, sometimes red and sometimes yellow, 

 give, at times, a certain amount of colour to a landscape which, 

 beautiful as it always is, is sometimes rather sombre in colour — at least, 

 for the tropics. 



But beyond these solemn-looking mountain-slopes one's eye is 

 carried to the sea, extraordinarily blue in colour, and beyond that again 

 to the far-distant chain of coral islets known as the Yasawas, which, as 

 the Fijians say, lie away in wailangilala — whiQ-h may b^ t;ranslat.ed as 

 * water-sky-nothingness^.' ' 



