BOTANY or FERjSTANDO noeonha. 15 



diminution in the number of trees had occurred of late years, 

 neither do the more recent accounts of Webster, Darwin, or 

 Moseley lead one to suppose that the island was very much richer 

 in trees than it is now. 



Another cause for the change of the flora is to be seen in the 

 more recently introduced plants, and the creeping and climbing 

 plants seem to be rapidly destroying the older vegetation. The 

 number of climbing plants on the island is very large, belonging 

 chiefly to the orders Cucurbitaceae and Leguminos?e. The 

 former, especially Momordica Charantia and Cayaponia Tajuqa, 

 cover the trees and bushes on the edges of the forest with a 

 dense mat of stems, so that they are soon suffocated and de- 

 stroyed, and when they have fallen to the ground they are soon 

 covered with a carpet of thickly woven stems of Cucurbitacese 

 and Leguminosse, of which Phaseolus peduncularis appears to be 

 the most destructive, and on the ground thus once covered the 

 shrubs can no longer reassert themselves. Furthermore during 

 the dry season, December to February, these climbing-plants 

 wither and dry up and are set on fire, and any seedlings of the 

 shrubs which may have escaped strangulation by the climbers 

 are destroyed. The conflict between the climbing-plants and the 

 shrubs was very well seen all along the eastern edge of the 

 Sapate. In the woods themselves these plants were entirely 

 absent, since they were unable to grow among the dense shrubs, 

 from want of light and air. 



The Freshwater Fauna and Flora. 

 The number of permanent streams and pools in the whole 

 Archipelago is very small, as in the dry season almost all dry up. 

 There is a spring on Eat Island said to be never dry, and there 

 are also one or two on the main island, where besides there is 

 the largest stream at Sueste, and also the lake in the south-west 

 corner, in both of which aquatic plants and animals might occur ; 

 none of these, however, are rich in fauna or flora. The lake 

 contained a species of Nitella and an alga, an aquatic beetle and 

 Hemipteron, a new species of Planorhis, and an Ostracod, the 

 latter also occurring in all the streams of any size. The remain- 

 ing streams and puddles produced dragonflies, a species of 

 Gammarus, and a few algae. One may compare this with the 

 freshwater fauna and flora of the other Atlantic islands. The 

 absence of freshwater fish and amphibians is common to most 

 small islands. 



