448 HER M. 
luxuriant that there is no appearance of barrenness. The population 
consisted of thirty-eight persons when the last census was taken in 
r891. During the summer months excursions are made from 
Guernsey every few days by steamer, the passage occupying about 
half an hour. 
Mention is made of Herm in early times. There is a document 
still extant recording that the island, together with Sark, Alderney, 
and one-half of Guernsey, were presented to the great Benedictine 
Abbey of Mont St. Michel, by Robert, Duke of Normandy, the 
father of William the Conqueror. In the thirteenth century, and for 
two hundred years afterwards, there was a church in Herm, the 
traces of which have long since disappeared, unless the remains 
of it are to be found in an ancient building which is now used as 
a barn. ; 
From the old historians we learn that Herm and Jethou were 
formerly preserved as a deer park or chase for the use of the 
Governors of Guernsey, who long enjoyed the privilege of hunting 
and shooting there. In :716 an inquiry was held ‘for the discovery 
of certain persons who had killed stags, roebucks, and pheasants on 
the island, contrary to the ordinance ;’ and it is said that the last 
two deer were killed about the year 1773. 
The rocks of Herm consist chiefly of hornblendic granite. 
Traces of copper ore are reported to have been found, and mining 
operations were at one time commenced: but the chief mineral 
product of the place is granite, which many years ago was rather 
largely exported, though quarrying has long since ceased. It may 
be mentioned, in passing, that the steps of the Duke of York’s 
Column, in London, are made of the stone from this island 
Small as it is, there is plenty in Herm to occupy the attention of 
the botanist, as distinguished from the mere plant-collector, and he 
will soon discover that there is more ground to be gone over than he 
anticipated. The vegetation of a diminutive island like this is in 
some respects more interesting and more suggestive than that of a 
large tract of country, because its character is less likely to have 
altered through: human agency, and consequently the question of 
accounting for the existence or absence of certain plants, ‘the fact 
that some are there and others are not there, a problem which involves 
all the migrations of these species and their ancestral forms,’ as 
Alfred Russel Wallace says in a passage already quoted in these 
pages, can be studied in all its bearings. 
In Babington’s Flora Sarnica, 174 wild plants, viz., 172 phane- 
rogams, 1 equisetum, and 1 fern, are recorded for Herm, as observed 
by the author, who paid a visit to the island on the 21st of August, 
1837. At that time of the year many spring flowers would have 
entirely disappeared, which accounts for their omission from his list. 
Fifty-two years later, on June 15th, 1889, I accompanied a party of 
excursionists, who were mostly bent on investigating the marine 
