590 A. E. Verrill — The Bermuda Islands 



It is highly probable that various plants with edible fruits or seeds 

 had existed there previously, of which we know nothing ; some of 

 them may have been endemic; the seeds of others ma} r have been 

 brought by the birds, like most of those that survived. In fact, the 

 migratory birds are more likely to have introduced plants having 

 edible berries and hard seeds than any others. 



Possibly a future study of the plant remains buried in the deeper 

 peat-bogs may reveal some of the plants that originally grew in the 

 islands, but were exterminated by the hogs and wood-rat s. 



b. —Effects of the Plague of Wood-Eats, 1614-1618. 



The hordes of wood-rats that appeared and overran the islands 

 in 1014-1618, just about the time that the wild hogs Avere exter- 

 minated (see ch. 33, b), must also have destroyed vast numbers of 

 plants and their seeds. The settlers were unable to raise any edible 

 crops, at that time, on account of their ravages, but the rats, evi- 

 dently, did not eat the tobacco crop. Their habit of ascending the 

 highest trees would have enabled them to destroy all the berries of 

 the palmetto and cedar, and all other edible wild fruits and seeds. 

 They may have totally exterminated many plants that had escaped 

 the hogs. Probably their final, very sudden disappearance was due 

 to starvation, after they had destroyed all available food. (See 

 ch. 33, b.) 



It seems probable, therefore, that the remarkably small number of 

 indigenous plants, at the time of the early settlements, was owing, to 

 a very considerable extent, to the effects of the hogs and rats. 

 Probably, also, part of the native plants that have become very 

 localized, as at Walsingham and in the marshes, were among those 

 nearly exterminated at that time. 



The subsequent altered conditions of the land, owing to deforest- 

 ing, burning, and cultivation, may well have been sufficient to prevent 

 their subsequent diffusion, and many such species, left in small num- 

 bers, may have gradually died out during the subsequent three 

 centuries, because of changed conditions. 



Several of those that are still left are apparently on the verge of 

 extinction, for they have constantly decreased in their range ami 

 numbers during the past thirty years, or ever since they have been 

 studied, and perhaps some of those enumerated above are already 

 extinct. 



Probably many species of birds, reptiles, insects, snails, etc., were 

 also exterminated, at the same time, by the hogs and rats, for both 



