12 THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGER. 



and white sandal, the yellow wood, or Fagus lutea, 1 and a tree whose genus I am unac- 

 quainted with, that produces a species of pepper 2 inferior to that of the East Indies." Beyond 

 this general statement he says nothing, so that we have no evidence that there were living 

 sandalwood trees in the island at the beginning of the present century ; but the inference 

 is that there were. Nevertheless, it would seem that nothing except specimens of the wood 

 exist in any Natural History collection. In 1830 Bertero specially searched for it, though 

 in vain. There was still plenty of decayed, half buried trunks. Gay 3 has a definite state- 

 ment to the effect that it was all completely destroyed, or rather perished, in one and the 

 same year, but he does not cite his authority for it. His words are : " En o tro tiempo 

 [el Santal] era muy comun en la isla de Juan Fernandez, pero perecieron todos en un mismo 

 ano y hoy no se encuentra sino troncos muertos ; lo mismo sucedio en Inglaterra con el 

 Platano en el siglo 18.'' We are left to guess by what agency the sandalwood trees were 

 destroyed, and as he cites the destruction of the true occidental plane in England as a 

 parallel case, it might be supposed that excessive cold was the real or suspected agent. 

 But such an event seems so very improbable that we shall dismiss it without further dis- 

 cussion. It is true that Santalum album inhabits a warmer climate, but, as Philippi 

 remarks, 4 the Juan Fernandez sandalwood was almost certainly a different species, and most 

 likely peculiar to the island. The Sandwich Island sandalwood (Santalum freycinetianum 

 and Santalum pyrularium) and the Fiji sandalwood (Santalum yasi) are quite distinct from 

 the tropical Asian Santalum album. Yet, as already observed, there is no proof that the 

 Juan Fernandez sandalwood was a Santalum. Assuming it to be a species of Santalum, it 

 would, in the present distribution of the genus, be a very remote outlier. Unfortunately, there 

 is no specimen of the wood at Kew, so there is no opportunity of examining its structure and 

 comparing it with other kinds of sandalwood. In the place cited above, Philippi states that 

 in 1856 there were still many portions of trunks of sandalwood scattered about the island up 

 to the highest summits of the cliffs, but so weather-worn that only the heart-wood remained. 

 Such a frap-nient was in the museum at Santiago indicating a tree two feet in diameter. 

 Now, Santalum album never, we believe, attains such large dimensions; a diameter of 

 eighteen inches being very uncommon even where it grows most vigorously. Respecting 

 the extinction of the Juan Fernandez sandalwood tree, Philippi says he is utterly unable 

 to account for it. A volcanic disturbance would not single out a certain species, but 

 destroy whole forests ; and then it is quite inconceivable that the seed in the ground could 

 be killed by such an agency. He further states that the pieces of sandalwood found in 

 the island often exhibit holes, which are evidently the work of the larva of some Goat- 

 chafer ; but at the present time there are no traces in the island of a Goat-chafer of so 

 large a size. The agent of destruction will probably remain unknown, as also of the 

 innumerable dead prostrate trees observed in South Trinidad by Dr Copelaud. A 



1 Zanthoxylum mayu.—W. B. H. ? - Flora Chilcna, v. (1819), p. 326. 



2 Lactoris fernandezia. — W. B. II. 4 Botanische Zeitung, 1856, p. 635. 



