d thus of a form
well adapted to be carried to great heights and distances by gales or
hurricanes.

In the other orders which present several endemic genera indications of the
mode of transit to the islands are afforded us. The Araliaceae are said to
have fleshy fruits or drupes more or less succulent. The Rubiaceae have
usually berries or drupes, while one genus, Kadua, has "small, flat, winged
seeds." The two largest genera of the Labiatae are said to have "fleshy
nucules," which would no doubt be swallowed by birds.[78]

_Antiquity of the Hawaiian Fauna and Flora._--The great antiquity implied
by the peculiarities of the fauna and flora, no less than by the
geographical conditions and surroundings, of this group, will enable us to
account for another peculiarity of its flora--the absence of so many
families found in other Pacific Islands. For the earliest immigrants would
soon occupy much of the surface, and become specially modified in
accordance with the conditions of the locality, and these would serve as a
barrier against the intrusion of many forms which at a later {329} period
spread over Polynesia. The extreme remoteness of the islands, and the
probability that they have always been more isolated than those of the
Central Pacific, would also necessarily result in an imperfect and
fragmentary representation of the flora of surrounding lands.

_Concluding Observations on the Fauna and Flora of the Sandwich
Islands._--The indications thus afforded by a study of the flora seem to
accord well with what we know of the fauna of the islands. Plants having so
much greater facilities for dispersal than animals, and also having greater
specific longevity and greater powers of endurance under adverse
conditions, exhibit in a considerable degree the influence of the primitive
state of the islands and their surroundings; while members of the animal
world, passing across the sea with greater difficulty and subject to
extermination by a variety of adverse conditions, retain much more of the
impress of a recent state of things, with perhaps here and there an
indication of that ancient approach to America so clearly shown in the
Compositae and some other portions of the flora.

GENERAL REMARKS ON OCEANIC ISLANDS.

We have now reviewed the main features presented by the assemblages of
organic forms which characterise the more important and best known of the
Oceanic Islands. They all agree in the total absence of indigenous m