Lord Howe Island, Part 3 — Paramonov 
369 
Fig. 7. The lagoon viewed from the south during low tide. In the foreground are coral reefs, of interest 
to the marine zoologist; behind these is low Rabbit Island, and in the background is the northern part of the 
island with tooth-shaped Mt. Eliza. (Photo by Miss Z. Liepa. ) 
This means that we must be very careful 
in making conclusions based only on numerical 
data. For the history of the flora and fauna the 
easily distributed elements are practically value- 
less. 
Let us turn to the analysis of the species. Of 
209 species of the flora 70 (or 33%) are en- 
demic. The percentage of specific endemism is 
TABLE 1 
TOTAL 
NO. OF 
SPECIES 
ENDEMIC 
SPECIES 
INCLUDED 
IN TOTAL 
PERCENTAGE 
OF ENDEMIC 
FORMS 
Whole flora 
209 
70 
33 
Australia 
168 
41 
24 
New Zealand 
109 
38 
35 
Polynesia 
116 
39 
34 
very high. Oliver gives the following table 
which is very instructive: 
From Table 1 (from Oliver, 1917) it is evi- 
dent that endemic forms of Lord Howe Island 
are distinctly more closely related to New Zea- 
land and Polynesia than to Australia. As a re- 
sult, the line of Gressitt (1956) must be trans- 
ferred westwards of Lord Howe Island, separat- 
ing it from the Australian continent. The zoo- 
logical data also have shown that the fauna of 
the island is more closely related to the lands 
to the east than to Australia. 
A direct connection of Lord Howe Island 
with Norfolk Island, however, is doubtful, be- 
cause the Araucarias of Norfolk Island have not 
reached Lord Howe Island naturally, although 
those transplanted by man are growing very 
well (see Fig. 6). 
