FLORA 
OF THE 
VITIAN ISLANDS. 
HISTORICAL NOTICE. 
Wauen in 1836 Steffan Endlicher* summed up all then known respecting the vegetation 
of the Polynesian Islands, he was forced to make the humiliating confession that our 
botanical knowledge of the Viti group was limited to the fact that it abounded in rich 
forests of sandal-wood; and it is not a little remarkable that it was this single fact. which 
led to the existing intercourse between the savage Vitian and the rest of mankind, enabling 
us at the present day to institute, with comparatively little danger from falling victims 
te cannibalism, peaceful scientific inquiries. 
When Europeans first came in contact with the vegetation of Viti, it was not, strictly 
speaking, virgin. We know, from traditional sources,t that from time immemorial an 
intercourse was maintained between Viti and the islands composing the Tongan (Friendly ) 
and Samoan (Navigator) group; and that the products of these were exchanged by 
means of large canoes, chiefly built in Viti, where tree vegetation assumed greater 
dimensions than in the other islands just named. © In this way not only useful and 
ornamental plants, but also weeds, and a knowledge of the qualities, virtues, and names 
of different herbs, shrubs, and trees were doubtless interchanged. ‘The Samoans and 
Tongans made voyages to Viti for the sake of obtaining timber for canoes, and above all 
sandal-wood for scenting cocoa-nut oil. There is no mention in this early intercourse of 
Tahiti, and we may therefore assume that none took place, sandal-wood, the staple article 
of this incipient commerce, having in those days not yet become extinct either in the 
Society or neighbouring Marquesas Islands. Nor is any mention made of New Zealand, 
which has but few phanerogamous plants in common with Viti (and these all species widely 
* ¢ Annalen des Wiener Museums,’ 4to, Wien, 1836, p. 129. 
+ Compare B. Seemann’s ‘ Viti; a Government Mission to the Vitian or Fijian Islands,’ 8vo, London, 
1862, p. 236, seg. ; and W. T. Pritchard’s ‘ Polynesian Researches,’ 8yo, London, 1866, p. 376, seq. 
c 
