BERMUDA BIOLOGICAL STATION. 409 



of the land with their brilliant colors, which occur in such masses that 

 they are the admiration of all who see them. On the bleak north 

 shores, the tamarisk has been planted as a break against wind and 

 salt-water. Though not an especially graceful shrub, the soft green 

 of its fine-cut foliage makes a pleasant impression on the eye, and it 

 enjoys the great practical advantage of being about the only kind of 

 verdure that can really thrive in the presence of the abundant salt- 

 spray which the prevailing winds drive in upon the land. 



The fiddle-wood tree (Citliarexylum quadrangulare) is to-day the 

 commonest of the deciduous trees in Bermuda, but the first tree of this 

 species on the islands — the one from which all the others are reported 

 to have come — was imported as recently as 1830, and is still standing. 

 The Pride of India (Melia azedarach) is a rather scraggy, forlorn 

 looking tree in mid-summer, and one wonders why it is so much culti- 

 vated; but in early spring, before the leaves are out, it puts forth a 

 profusion of pink flowers that makes it a great favorite with the Ber- 

 mudians. It seems as though Bermuda must be the home of the 

 genius Hibiscus, so many species are met with. In mid-summer their 

 blossoms exhibit some remarkably gorgeous colors. Still, the most 

 superb of all the ornamental trees and shrubs to be seen here 

 is the Poinciana regia, a native of Madagascar, a tree with spreading 

 branches clothed in the most pleasing green and decked with beautiful 

 clusters of brilliant red blossoms. 



The land animals, with the exception of insects and mollusks, 

 are remarkably few, and of these most are probably not natives of 

 the islands any more than are the majority of the phgenogamic 

 plants. 



Except for domesticated animals, mammals are numerous neither 

 in species nor in individuals. The most interesting one is doubtless the 

 wood rat (Mus tectorum), which lives in trees and is now nearly ex- 

 tinct. This was at one time a dreaded scourge to the early settlers. 

 Nearly 300 years ago (1619), Governor Butler, writing of the timely 

 arrival of a so-called runaway frigate that brought food and thus 

 averted impending famine, said : 



But howsoever this runne away frigate brought with her a timely and 

 acceptable sacrifice of her meale; yet the companions of her meale, numbers 

 of ratts (which wer the first that the ilands ever sawe), being received with-all 

 and on a soudaine multiplyinge themselves by an infinite increase (for ther is 

 noe place in the world so proper for them), within the space of one only yeare 

 they became so terrible to the poore inhabitants, as that (like one of Pharaoths 

 plagues) the whole plantation was almost utterly subverted therby; and so 

 farr gone it was at last, that it proved Captaine Tucker's masterpiece all his 

 time (which was not long after) to devise trapps and stratagems to conquer 

 and destroye them, though indeed all of them proved to noe purpose (as you 

 shall see hereafter) untill afterwards, one moneth of cold and wett weather did 

 the deed. 



vol. lxvi. — 27. 



