an island of small size and great antiquity,
very distant from every other land, and probably at no time very much less
distant from surrounding continents, which became stocked by chance
immigrants from other countries at some remote epoch, and which has
preserved many of their more or less modified descendants to the present
time. When first visited by civilised man it was in all probability far
more richly stocked with plants and animals, forming a kind of natural
museum or vivarium in which ancient types, perhaps dating back to the
Miocene {309} period, or even earlier, had been saved from the destruction
which has overtaken their allies on the great continents. Unfortunately
many, we do not know how many, of these forms have been exterminated by the
carelessness and improvidence of its civilised but ignorant rulers; and it
is only by the extreme ruggedness and inaccessibility of its peaks and
crater-ridges that the scanty fragments have escaped by which alone we are
able to obtain a glimpse of this interesting chapter in the life-history of
our earth.

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CHAPTER XV

THE SANDWICH ISLANDS

Position and Physical Features--Zoology of the Sandwich
Islands--Birds--Reptiles--Land-shells--Insects--Vegetation of the
Sandwich Islands--Peculiar Features of the Hawaiian Flora--Antiquity of
the Hawaiian Fauna and Flora--Concluding Observations on the Fauna and
Flora of the Sandwich Islands--General Remarks on Oceanic Islands.

The Sandwich Islands are an extensive group of large islands situated in
the centre of the North Pacific, being 2,350 miles from the nearest part of
the American coast--the bay of San Francisco, and about the same distance
from the Marquesas and the Samoa Islands to the south, and the Aleutian
Islands a little west of north. They are, therefore, wonderfully isolated
in mid-ocean, and are only connected with the other Pacific Islands by
widely scattered coral reefs and atolls, the nearest of which, however, are
six or seven hundred miles distant, and are all nearly destitute of animal
or vegetable life. The group consists of seven large inhabited islands
besides four rocky islets; the largest, Hawaii, being seventy miles across
and having an area 3,800 square miles--being somewhat larger than all the
other islands together. A better conception of this large island will be
formed by comparing it with Devonshire, with which it closel