590 A. EF. 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 may 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 origimally grew in the 
islands, but were exterminated by the hogs and wood-rats. 
b.—Eeffects of the Plague of Wood-Rats, 1614-1618. 
The hordes of wood-rats that appeared and overran the islands 
in 1614-1618, just about the time that the wild hogs were exter- 
minated (see ch. 33, 6), 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, 0.) 
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 and 
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 
