756 Hemsley . — On the Gemis Cory nocar pus , Forst., 
Mr. H. H. Travers (Trans. New Zealand Institute, iv, p. 64) 
that their Maori ancestors came originally to New Zealand 
from Hawaiki, and when they migrated to the Chathams they 
took with them the kumera ( Ipomoea tuberculata) and the 
karaka ( Corynocarpus laevigata ), but the former did not thrive 
owing to the moistness of the climate. Travers found the 
karaka growing abundantly in the immediate neighbourhood 
of the various old settlements, but not in the general bush of 
the island, which gives colour to the statement of its compara- 
tively recent introduction. This, however, does not quite 
accord with Mr. L. Cockayne’s more recent experience (Trans. 
New Zeal. Inst., xxxiv, p. 277), for he states that Corynocarpus 
laevigata is the predominating tree in the £ Lowland Forest,’ 
by which he means all below the tableland. The Chatham 
Islands are about 450 miles east of New Zealand in about the 
same latitude as Banks’s Peninsula. C. laevigata is also 
abundant in Sunday Island, one of the Kermadec group, 
which is situated about midway between New Zealand and the 
Tonga group ; but I have found no historical records in this 
connexion. Cockayne goes on to state c that according to 
Mr. A. Shand the aborigines of Chatham Islands . . . did not 
cultivate the ground at all. The only vegetable foods they 
made use of were the rhizome of Pteris esculenta [P. aquilina\ 
and the fruit of Corynocarpus laevigata .’ Whether this means 
that they did not even plant the seeds of the latter is un- 
certain. 
Some writers, however, regard it as almost certain that 
Hawaiki was the name of one of the islands of the Navigators’ 
or Samoan group and that the migration was by way of 
Rarotonga ; but the botany of this group and the neighbouring 
Tonga or Friendly Islands is so well known that it is extremely 
unlikely that the genus Corynocarpus exists in either of these 
groups. And Mr. T. F. Cheeseman, a well-known New 
Zealand botanist, has recently botanically explored the island 
of Rarotonga 1 almost exhaustively, so far as the vascular 
1 Transactions of the Linnean Society, 2nd series, Botany, vi, pp. 261-313, 
tt. 31-35* 
