146 
PACIFIC SCIENCE, VoL VIII, April, 1954 
the island of Hawaii. The two species of 
Pittosporum and the Rutaceae were certainly 
from Kauai; the Canthium probably was too; 
the cultivated Sesbania and the native Sida 
may have been on either Kauai or Niihau. 
It probably should be pointed out that Niihau, 
though with a mountainous upland, is rather 
low, the highest point being 1,281 feet in 
altitude. Besides being too low to get a heavy 
rainfall, the island is situated exactly in the 
lee of the large island, Kauai, and thus has 
little chance of rain during the prevailing 
trade-wind weather. Though this upland was 
once forested, the indications are that the 
trees were small and of the dry, lower forest 
type. Kauai is a higher island with the broad 
summit of Waialeale attaining 5,080 feet al- 
titude. Its rainfall there is 451 inches annually, 
probably the maximum of precipitation that 
can be taken from these clouds. In conse- 
quence, as these same clouds drift over Niihau, 
only 40 miles to the leeward, there is little or 
no rain ready to fall on a small ridge only 
1,281 feet high. These geographic and me- 
teorologic facts are the basis for the present 
interpretation that all of the Sinclair plants 
which are of the rain-forest type must cer- 
tainly have come from Kauai. 
The vernacular names of Hawaiian plants 
as recorded by Mrs. Sinclair are of some in- 
terest. She could have learned them locally 
or she could have compiled them. For light 
on the latter possibility, the writer has checked 
those books or accounts by explorers or bot- 
anists published previous to her book. The 
following published no Hawaiian vernacular 
names: Cook; Chamisso; Lay and Collie; 
Meyen; Nuttall; Brackenridge, Pickering, 
Peale, Rich, and their commander Wilkes; 
Wawra; and Mann and Brigham. There were 
other collectors during this period from 1788 
to 1885, but the following published nothing 
during this century: Menzies; Bloxam; Doug- 
las; Macrae; Didrichsen; Remy; and Hille- 
brand; though some of them published later 
or their works were later issued posthum- 
ously. The following recorded no native 
names, even on their specimens: Menzies; 
Chamisso; Lay and Collie; Nuttall; Macrae; 
and Wawra. Almost without exception the 
writer has searched the records for vernacular 
names, either in the published works of these 
early collectors or on the original specimens. 
Mrs. Sinclair’s record of Hawaiian vernacular 
names is sufficiently different in wording or 
in spelling, so that it is perfectly clear that 
she obtained these common names from the 
Hawaiian native people in her vicinity on 
Kauai or Niihau islands. 
REFERENCES 
[Britten, James.] 1886. Notices of books. 
Jour. BoL, Brit, and Foreign 24: 27. 
Degener, Otto. 1932- . Flora FLawaiiensis 
1-4- [Privately published]. 
Hillebrand, William. 1888. Flora of the Ha- I 
waiian Islands. 96+673 pp., frontispiece, | 
4 maps. C. Winter, Heidelberg. ; 
St. John, Harold. 1940. Hawaiian plants ’ 
named by Endlicher in 1836. Hawaiian j 
plant studies 8. Bernice P. Bishop Mus., | 
Occas. Papers 15(22): 229-238. 
Sherff, E. E. 1933. New or otherwise note- 
worthy Compositae. IX. Bot. Gaz. 95: 
78-103. 
1942. Revision of the Hawaiian mem- 
bers of the genus Pittosporum Banks. Field 
Mus. Nat. Hist., Bot. Ser. 22(10): 467-566. 
Sinclair, Mrs. Francis, Jr. 1885. Indigenous ’ 
flowers of the Hawaiian Islands. Five pages un- ji 
numbered; 44 colored plates, each with one 
unnumbered page of text. Sampson Low, 
Marston, Searle, and Rivington, London. 
Weiss, J. E. 1889. 620. F. Sinclair jun. be- 
schreibt . . . Justs Bot. Jahresber. 14(2): 221. 
