132 flora of Guadalupe Island. [ZOE 
there deposited. The few scattered pines still living on the ridge 
afford a fine example of the power of trees in condensing and 
storing water. When a strong wind blows the fog up from the 
ocean, while the surrounding ground looks hardly wet, under 
the pines it will be pouring hard with streamlets of water 
running from the base of their trunks. For this peculiar office 
the acicular leaves of the pines are eminently adapted, and one 
can easily understand that when all the northwestern part of the 
island was clothed with a dense pine forest, springs must have 
been much more abundant, and the vegetation on the eastern 
side must have largely benefited by them. ‘The springs are not 
far from each other and nearly in the centre of them are the 
cabins built a few years ago by the International Company of 
Lower California, which has since abandoned the lease of the 
island as unprofitable. 
The increase in the number of wild goats has gone on these 
last years unchecked by the few thousand which may have been 
killed by the poachers who visit the island from time to time. 
The result is vividly shown by the fact that in all my ramblings 
over the island I was unable to find but one single ‘shrub, 
Ceanothus crassifolius, alive in any of the places inaccessible to 
goats. Endowed as these are with proverbial climbing ability, the 
more so when pressed by hunger, the few plants that have escaped 
destruction are those growing on the perpendicular basaltic cliffs, 
accessible only to winged creatures, and old trees with bark too 
hard and woody to offer any food. Most of the shrubs and 
perennials seem not to be much adapted to assume a “‘ rupicole”’ 
habitus, seedlings being exceedingly scarce, so that in a few 
years’ time many of the species, represented now by a very 
limited number of individuals, will be entirely lost. ‘The same 
fate, in a longer period, is likely to be shared by the trees of which 
at present only the cypresses and palms are growing in large 
numbers, no reproduction being possible, as all seeds falling to 
the ground are devoured by goats or by mice. It is won- 
derful to see how kids a few months old, far from starving, 
are able to break and chew the kernels of the palm, hard as 
marble as they are. Anyone who has traveled along the 
Mediterranean basin, especially in some parts of Turkey and 
