AND PORTO SANTO. 93 



were made out of the trunks, and that the inhabitants fattened 

 their pigs on the fruit ; but he adds, that so many boats, shields, 

 and corn-measures had been made out of them, that even in his 

 time there was scarcely a dragon tree to be seen in the island ^ 

 Indeed there are not twenty trees of any kind left standing in the 

 island at present, and the inhabitants are obhged to make fires of 

 dried cow dung, when they cannot afford to import fire wood from 

 Madeira. If the ancients had visited Madeira and Porto Santo, as 

 M. Heeren supposes'', would they not, probably, have noticed this 

 extraordinary tree, which struck Cadamosto so forcibly ? 



We shot the falco oesalon"; the upupa capensis, which I presume 

 was not known to inhabit so far north ; the larus canus, said by the 

 natives to be blown over from the African coast; the columba livla, 

 of which there are large flocks; a turdus^; the loxia enucleator, 

 and a larger cori/thus". 



The temperature of the spring at Araya, (December 13th) was 

 66° or 42° higher than that of the air, which must be pretty 

 nearly the mean temperature of Porto Santo. On the sandy 

 beach of the south side of the island, the thermometer stood at 67° 

 at half past three P.M., and 60° at sunset. 



* Historia Insulana das Ilhas a Portugal Sugeytas no Oceano Occidental, composta 

 pelo Padre Antonio Cordeyro da Companhia de Jesus. Lisboa, Occidental, 1717. 



'' He considers them to be the Fortunate Islands of Diodorus Siculus. Afrika, 

 torn. 1. p. 124. 



■^ For its parasitical insect (a rici7ius,) see fig. 22; b, the under view, c, the claw, 

 (both magnified) colour pale brown. The peasantry say, that this falcon makes a 

 very good soup, and I remarked, that the stomachs of two which I dissected con- 

 tained nothing but insects (grylli) and grains. 



* The back and belly are brown, with patches of yellow, the wings and tail brown ; 

 the beak is strong, and of a brown colour, except the first half of the lower mandible, 

 which is yellow. 



' It is 16^ inches long: the two first pen-feathers of the wing, are but indistinctly 

 edged with white ; the five exterior long feathers of the tail are each marked with a 

 white spot at the end. 



