100 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



Note. — St. Helena. — As showing the changes which may take 

 place in the flora of a district within a few years, the following ex- 

 tract from an article entitled " Some Curious Facts in Plant Dis- 

 tribution," by W. B. Hemsley, F.R.S., in Knowledge for September 

 last, may be of interest. He says: — " I will now take the reader to 

 the historically interesting island of St. Helena, in the Atlantic ; 

 a rugged, rocky island, rising nearly 3,000 feet above the sea, and 

 having an area of 28,000 acres. Its isolation is extreme, being 

 upwards of 1,000 miles from the coast of Africa, and nearly 2,000 

 miles from the nearest point of the American continent. When 

 first discovered it was entirely clothed with forests, but no mammals 

 of any kind inhabited the island. As was customary in those 

 days, hogs and goats were introduced, in order to provide food 

 for chance visitors in the future. The goats especially multiplied 

 to such an extent that they destroyed the vegetation, or at least 

 prevented seedlings from growing up and replacing that removed 

 by decay or felling. The aboriginal vegetation consisted almost 

 entirely of woody plants and ferns, the bulk of the former belong- 

 ing to the great family Compositce, of which the daisies and asters 

 are familiar examples. It was not until the beginning of the 

 present century that the island was thoroughly botanized, and it 

 is possible that some of the native plants had already 

 disappeared ; at all events, many were already very rare. In 

 1875 an exhaustive account was published of the condition 

 of the then almost entirely displaced native plants, as well as of 

 the plants that had replaced them. At that date less than 

 half a dozen of the sixty-five certainly indigenous species 

 of flowering plants and ferns collected in the island at the 

 beginning of the century were actually extinct ; yet, with the 

 exception of a few scattered individuals, the only remnant of 

 the former flora was high up in the central ridge of mountains 

 and in inaccessible parts of the island. Trees that once covered 

 hundreds of acres were reduced to a few individuals ; some to a 

 single example. Large areas once covered with vegetation are 

 now bare, in consequence of the rains having washed the soil 

 from the rocks. In other parts the ground has been completely 

 taken possession of by introduced plants from various parts of 

 the world, prominent amongst which are many British species. 

 Our common furze is now the most abundant shrub in the island, 

 affording employment to many natives, who cut it and take it 

 into the town to be used as fuel. Among trees the British oak is 

 one of the most thoroughly naturalized, growing to a great size 

 and producing acorns in profusion ; and the Scotch fir and allied 

 species had been planted to the extent of two hundred acres in 

 1875. Thus has nearly the whole surface of the island been 

 completely altered ; and soon, doubtless, most of the original 

 plants of the island will be extinct, for they exist nowhere else in 

 a wild state, and those in cultivation are difficult to preserve." 



