are known in the Hawaiian Islands, and they
exhibit much difference _inter se_." A few remarks on each of the more
important of the families will serve to indicate their probable mode and
period of introduction into the islands.

The Carabidae consist chiefly of seven peculiar genera of Anchomenini
comprising fifty-one species, and several endemic species of Bembidiinae.
They are highly peculiar and are all of small size, and may have originally
reached the islands in the crevices of the drift wood from N.W. America
which is still thrown on their shores, or, more rarely, by means of a
similar drift from the N.-Western islands of the Pacific.[75] It is
interesting to note that peculiar species of the same groups of Carabidae
are found in the Azores, Canaries, and St. Helena, indicating that they
possess some special facilities for transmission across wide oceans and for
establishing themselves upon oceanic islands. The Staphylinidae present
many peculiar species of known genera. Being still more minute and usually
more ubiquitous than the Carabidae, there is no difficulty in accounting
for their presence in the islands by the same means of dispersal. The
Nitidulidae, Ptinidae, and Ciodidae being very small and of varied habits,
either the perfect insects, their eggs or larvae, may have been introduced
either by water or wind carriage, or through the agency of birds. The
Curculionidae, being wood bark or nut borers, would have considerable
facilities for transmission by floating timber, fruits, or nuts; and the
eggs or larvae of the {321} peculiar Cerambycidae must have been introduced
by the same means. The absence of so many important and cosmopolitan groups
whose size or constitution render them incapable of being thus transmitted
over the sea, as well as of many which seem equally well adapted as those
which are found in the islands, indicate how rare have been the conditions
for successful immigration; and this is still further emphasized by the
extreme specialisation of the fauna, indicating that there has been no
repeated immigration of the same species which would tend, as in the case
of Bermuda, to preserve the originally introduced forms unchanged by the
effects of repeated intercrossing.

_Vegetation of the Sandwich Islands._--The flora of these islands is in
many respects so peculiar and remarkable, and so well supplements the
information derived from its interesting but scanty fauna, that a brief
account of