H. B. Guppy

“ Then sweeps along the lowering arched mass with its rain and its waterspouts, its wind and its thunder and lightning. On it comes, looking all the blacker as it spreads athwart the heavens and turns the star-lit night into a lightless gloom. Overtaken in the night by such a squall, unable to see more than half a cable’s length on either side, and perhaps in the vicinity of sunken reefs the position of which is uncertain, a sailor has need of all his wits. ”

“ On such occasions the highest peak of Hualalai kept reappearing and disappearing during the day, but the distant summit of Haleakala in East Maui, 10,032 feet in elevation and 80 miles away, was always visible.
Words fail to describe the magnificent aspect of this sea of cloud which shuts off the spectator from the world below. From the summit of the mountain he gazes down on its surface lit up by a sun shining in a typically cloudless sky. At one time it appears as an undulating Arctic land covered with snow of dazzling whiteness. ”

“ In Fiji I trod upon the surface of submarine volcanoes that emerged ages since from the ocean and still retain their coverings of sea-deposits. Both in Hawaii and Fiji I lived much among the people; and though my chief interest lay in the comparison of these two types of volcanic islands, I could not but be drawn to the kindly natives whose hospitality I so long enjoyed.
Destiny led me to Vanua Levu in the following fashion. With the relief party to take me down from Mauna Loa there arrived a well-known German naturalist who, like myself, had been interested in coral-reef investigations. ”

“ When I say that Nature makes no direct provision for the dispersal of plants and animals, I mean not in the sense that a bird is adapted for an aerial life, or an aquatic plant for a more or less submerged existence. That a bird is often able to distribute its kind over a great area is the “accident” of its conditions of existence. In a similar way the wide distribution of the “ticks” that they carry round the world is due to the parasitical habits of these insects, habits that have been acquired without any view to their mode of dispersal by birds. ”

“ The gloom that there prevails is rarely lightened by the direct rays of the sun, except here and there through the gap left by the downfall of one of the huge trunks that now lies rotting on the ground. Nor is the silence that reigns often broken, except by the cooing of the fruit-pigeons overhead or by the rushing flight of the hornbill startled from its repose. ”

“ But when in such an island we regard the intermediate region between the uplands and the coast, usually the forest-zone, we find an area of change not only for the plants but also for the birds. It is here that the new genera of plants have been developed that distinguish the floras of the Pacific groups each from the others; and here also the migrant bird, having from some cause changed its ways, has given rise to new varieties and to new species. ”

“ For there can be no region of the world where he experiences more tantalisation. Day after day he skirts the shores of islands of which science has no “ken.” Month after month, he may scan, as I have done, lofty mountain-masses never yet explored, whose peaks rise through the clouds to heights of from 7,000 to 10,000 feet above the sea. He may discern on the mountain-slopes the columns of blue smoke which mark the abodes of men who have never beheld the white man. ”

“ Observers at the coast often little imagine, when looking at a cloud-concealed mountain peak, that although the cloud-belt from below looks black and lowering and rain is falling heavily in the gloomy forests, there is on the upper side a region of bright sunshine, and that the peak stands out, unseen by them, above a sea of clouds sparkling brilliantly in the sun and dazzling in their whiteness. It will be seen from the table given in Note 61, that during my sojourn on the summit of Mauna Loa the sky was cloudless or almost free from cloud during nearly half the time. ”

“ Although accustomed to traverse districts which have been upheaved in recent times to elevations of several hundred feet above the sea, the finding of an ancient coral-reef high up a densely-wooded hill-slope, or the picking up of sand and recent sea shells in the interior of an island now supporting a luxuriant vegetation, always excited the same feelings of wonder and interest that I experienced on first landing on one of the recently upheaved islands of the Solomon Group. ”

“ The plant world viewed only from the standpoint of dispersal may lack much that is pleasing to the eye, though it abounds with small and great problems fascinating to the reason. Matters of great moment are here involved, and in the case of the Pacific islands they concern not only the source of the oceanic floras, but the story of the islands themselves; whilst behind these there rise up questions of yet deeper import, questions that are bound up with the beginnings of genera and species, and with other mysteries of life on the earth. ”

“ A large bushy head of hair adds to the dignity of his appearance; and his powerful limbs, depth of chest, breadth of shoulders, and greater height distinguish him pre-eminently from his people. His rule is as despotic in Treasury as that of Gorai in the Shortlands; and he maintains his sway rather by the fear he inspires than by possessing any feeling of respect on the part of his subjects. On more than one occasion I have heard the natives use threatening language towards their chief, when he had made some arbitrary exercise of his power. ”

“ Then come a flood of old memories and old trains of thought that came to us years before on some mountain-top or in a shady gorge or on some river-bank, in regions Pacific and non-Pacific, and by degrees our ideas shape themselves and we begin to think the matter over in an orderly fashion. ”

“ Very rarely, I believe, does a fair, open fight occur. In their sham fights, one of which we witnessed on the beach at Santa Anna, two parties confront each other in open and irregular order and hurl their spears with all the excitement of a real contest. Every man keeps constantly on the move as in dancing a jig, in order to be able to more easily avoid the missiles hurled at him. [76] The boys of Treasury sometimes amuse themselves with a game of the same character, when they use as their weapons the stalk and bulb of the large taro. ”

“ Nature, so watchful over the young plant, as represented by the seed, is finally compelled to let it go, and dispersal begins where evolution ends, or rather when the evolutionary power fails. The seed-stage itself is the price of adaptation. ”

“ In the small island of Orika (Santa Catalina) the visitor will be followed about by a little train of children, of both sexes, with smiling, intelligent faces, and clad only in the garb which nature gave them. Whilst having an evening pipe in front of the house of Haununo, the young chief, Mr. W. Macdonald and I were surrounded by a varied throng of the natives of the village, both old and young. Numerous young children, from babes in arms to those three or four years old, formed no inconsiderable proportion of the number around us. ”

“ But if we look a little more closely at the sunken and floating seeds, we find that in the same genus there are species with seeds or seed-vessels that sink and species with those that float. We look again and then perceive that the same general principle is true of different species of the same genus growing inland and at the coast. We learn now that as a rule when a genus possesses both littoral and inland species, the seeds or fruits of the former float in sea-water for a long time, whilst those of the latter have little or no floating power. ”

“ When a head is required to satisfy the offended honour of a neighbouring chief, or when a life has to be sacrificed on the completion of a tambu-house or at the launching of a new war-canoe, the victim chosen is usually the man who is not a free-born native of the village. He may have been bought as a child and have lived amongst them from his boyhood up, a slave only in name, and enjoying all the rights of his fellow natives. ”

“ The problem of man in the Pacific bristles with difficulties differing in degree but not in kind from those relating to the flora. Whenever a particular theory seems on the point of being well established, some disturbing question arises, and as with the plant, we are never able to push our facts quite home. Since I first visited the Solomon Islands, now twenty-four years ago, the Pacific islander and his flora have deeply interested me. The history of man and of the plant cannot be separated in the Pacific; and the same determining principles of distribution have affected both. ”

“ On more than one occasion when alone, I came unexpectedly in the bush on one of these boars, who are in appearance by no means despicable antagonists. When they stand their ground, it is necessary to be prepared for their onset; but as a rule they only indicate their presence by the noise which they make when scampering away. In the islands of Bougainville Straits, where there are numerous plantations of sago palms, the wild pigs are very fond of the fruit of this palm before the albumen of the seed attains its stony hardness. ”

“ The mangrove-formation comprises, it may be pointed out, many plants other than mangroves, plants that find a home in the mangrove-swamps of Fiji, either within their limits or at their borders. It presents, indeed, a world in itself. When the mangroves establish themselves in a new locality they carry along with them a host of hangers-on, both plants and animals, that only find a home under the favourable conditions of a mangrove-swamp. Thus, the absence of the mangrove-formation from a Pacific island deprives its littoral flora of many very striking features. ”

“ When puzzled, a native sometimes adopts our sign of perplexity by frowning, and scratching his head.
On one occasion, I was much amused by the behaviour of some of the Treasury boys, lively young imps who used frequently to accompany me on my excursions. One of their number had been offended by his companions, who immediately began to caper round him, distorting their faces in a peculiar manner by drawing the eyes and mouth towards each other with their fingers, and producing an appearance reminding me of the human faces on the dance-clubs of Bougainville Straits and New Ireland. ”

“ If we look over the Pacific islands in search of a critical locality for the investigation of the genetic relation between the littoral and coast species of Erythrina, we discover it, as far as I can gather, only in one group. In Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa we find only the littoral species; in Hawaii there is only an inland species; whilst in Tahiti occur both the littoral and the inland species—E. indica, the wide-ranging shore-tree of the South Pacific, and E. monosperma, the inland tree of Hawaii—the last found nowhere else in Polynesia, and confined to the Pacific. ”

“ The soft clayey rock, which is exposed in the banks of the stream, affords a rich and even too productive soil. Nature runs riot and becomes prodigal in her profusion; and thus growth is too often associated with decay to present on all occasions a pleasing picture to the eye. Here the tree-fern, the croton, the wild plantain, and numerous areca palms flourish; but the alpinias, heliconias, and other scitamineous plants form the chief feature of the vegetation on this gently rising ground. ”

“ And as we walk through those noiseless forests, where the machinery of species-making is ever in silent motion, we become aware that we are treading one of Nature’s great workshops for the manufacture of species and genera. ”

“ Near by may be another banyan of larger size and presenting the appearance of a maze of columns which may cover an area thirty to forty feet across. Its victim has long since disappeared, and a hollow in the centre of the maze of stems alone marks the former situation of the huge buttress-tree.
What finer or more impressive simile could be employed to illustrate the gradual degeneration and final downfall of a nation under the choking influences of vice, corruption, luxury, and misgovernment? A mighty forest tree is slowly strangled by the caresses of an insidious creeper. ”

“ When we leave the beach and the mountain-top, the river and the pond, all the troubles of distribution begin; and since but a small proportion of plants in a typical flora belong to these stations, it follows that difficulties will dog our steps with the large majority of the plants. The agencies of dispersal now working around us, the current, the wind, the insect, the bird, and the bat, will explain many of the features of littoral and alpine floras and of the vegetation of ponds and rivers. Here we have in so many cases wide-ranging genera with the means of dispersal ready to hand. ”

“ The bush-tribes find their best protection on the summits of the high hills and on the crests of the mountain-ridges which traverse the interior of the island. I passed one night in the bush-village of Lawa, which is situated on a hill-top about 1,400 feet above the sea near the north coast of St. Christoval. As I was in a locality where probably no white man had been before, the novelty of my situation kept me awake the greater part of the night; and very early the next morning I rose up from my mat in the tambu-house to view, undisturbed, the interior region of the island. ”

“ The isolation of the oceanic archipelagoes may not explain the endemic character of the flora, but only the extreme degree to which the endemism is carried. When a genus is in its prime, it can defy all the limiting conditions imposed by similarity of station and by free and unchecked means of dispersal, the essential marks of a species or a genus having probably in their development little or no connection with environment. ”

“ The people of the village support their champion, and openly display their ill will against those at whom the diatribes of the orator have been directed. The suspected strangers return the taunts; and the feeling of irritation reaches its acme when a threatening gesture or the throwing of a spear sets ablaze the suppressed passions. Every man darts into the bush and the village is empty in a moment. ”

“ There is for me no more pregnant fact in plant-life than the thistle-seed blown before the wind, or the seed of our sea-convolvulus floating in the sea. It proves to my mind that the evolutionary power in nature is checked and 120hampered by conditions not of its own creation, and that two opposing forces are ever at work, the one creating and the other limiting the creative power, the actual mode of dispersal being but a blind and accidental result of the struggle. ”

“ But there lingered amongst the sea-faring population in Peru, memories of the missing islands of Mendana and Quiros, which were revived from time to time by some strange story told by men, who had returned to Callao from their voyage across the Pacific to Manilla. Even in the first quarter of last century, the mention of the Isles of Salomon suggested visions of beautiful and fertile lands, abounding in mineral wealth, and populated by a happy race of people who enjoyed a climate of perfect salubrity. ”

“ By following up the path of inquiry that is concerned with the flotation of seeds and seedvessels, we are guided into other fields of research that give promise of interesting discoveries in connection with plant-life. We are led in the first place to consider the question of utility, and to ask whether the buoyancy of the seed or fruit has been a matter of moment in the history of the species. Nature is ever engaged in telling off the plants to their various stations. ”

“ De Candolle many years ago, in his Géographie Botanique, gave a list of nearly 100 plants, made up of Old World species naturalised in America and of American species naturalised in the Old World, and quite half of them were classed as plants distributed in one way or another through man’s agency. Now this is either a subject of supreme importance or it is of no interest to the student of man’s history. If it should prove that birds have done most of this dispersal, then the story of the aboriginal weed would be of little interest in connection with the races of man in the New World. ”