CHAPTEK XV. 



THE SANDWICH ISLANDS. 



Position and Physical features — Zoology of the Sandwich Islands — Birds 

 — lieptiles — Land-shells — Insects — Vegetation of the Sandwich Islands 

 — Peculiar features of the Hawaiian Flora — Antiquity of the Hawaiian 

 Fauna and Flora— Concluding observations on the Fauna and Flora of 

 the Sandwich Islands — General Remarks on Oceanic Islands. 



The Sandwich Islands are an extensive group of large islands 

 situated in tlie centre of the North Pacific, being 2,350 

 miles from the nearest part of the American coast — the bay 

 of San Francisco, and about the same distance from the 

 Marquesas and the Samoa Islands to the south, and the 

 Aleutian Islands a little west of north. They are, therefore, 

 wonderfully isolated in mid-ocean, and are only connected with 

 the other Pacific Islands by widely scattered coral reefs and 

 atolls, the nearest of which, however, are six or seven hundred 

 miles distant, and are all nearly destitute of animal or vegetable 

 life. The group consists of seven large inhabited islands besides 

 four rocky islets ; the largest, Hawaii, being seventy miles across 

 and having an area of 3,800 square miles — being somewhat 

 larger than all the other islands together. A better conception 

 of this large island Avill be formed by comparing it with Devon- 

 shire, with which it closely agrees both in size and shape, though 

 its enormous volcanic mountains rise to nearly 14,000 feet high. 

 Three of the smaller islands are each about the size of Hertford- 

 shire or Bedfordshire, and the whole group stretches from north- 

 west to south-east for a distance of about 350 miles. Though so. 



