found its way from the Asiatic islands into the Pacific region. This conclusion is strengthened by the fact that the new Zealand natives, though cut off from their Polynesian relatives, preserved the names of plants they introduced, and conferred on indigenous species names in vogue throughout the Eastern Pacific. When Captain Cook took refuge in the Endeavour River, North Australia, he discovered, near to where Cooktown now stands, quantities of the Colocasia growing wild. As, according to the best authorities, the species does not belong to the Australian flora, we can only conclude that the continent had been visited at some former time by an agricultural people, though the art was unknown to the aborigines. In Polynesia the taro was grown in swamps or on artificially irrigated land; in New Zealand it was planted in ordinary dry ground. Notwithstanding this adaptation of culture to the climatic conditions, it was only in the northern portion of the archipelago the taro could be successfully raised. The very few cultivated plants the New Zealand people possessed being so ill adapted to the climate of the country accounts for an agricultural people being mainly dependent on the root of a wild fern (Pteris aquilina) for their vegetable supplies. Though many species of the order Aroideæ are bitter and poisonous, rude hunting peoples, having discovered how to expel the deleterious properties, use the roots for food. From this, together with the very wide distribution of the cultivated Colocasia in the Old World, it is supposed to have been one of the first plants brought into cultivation.* “Origin of Cultivated Plants.” A. De Candolle. Hue, or Calabash (Lagenaria vulgaris).—Throughout the tropical portion of the Old and New Worlds various species of the Lagenaria were extensively grown to furnish domestic utensils known under the general name of calabash. Whether the American calabash in cultivation before the time of Columbus was merely a variety of L. vulgaris is uncertain. From ancient records we learn that this species has been in cultivation on the Asiatic Continent for more than four thousand years. As the species does not belong to the Polynesian flora, we must conclude that it was introduced from the west, the white-flowered or Asiatic variety being everywhere in cultivation when Europeans entered the Pacific. In Cook's time the New-Zealanders grew the hue as an esculent, and for the manufacture of drinking-vessels; in this we see the effects of the country being peopled directly from the tropics, for nowhere else so far within the temperate zone were these utensils in general use. The earliest discoverers of Easter Island assert that the