CHAPTER XV. 
THE SANDWICH ISLANDS. 
Position and Physical features — Zoology of the Sandwich Islands — Birds 
— Reptiles — 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 the 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 will 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 sq 
