42 



Murphy, Birds of Fernando Noronha. 



[Auk 

 LJan. 



The bold, overhanging "Pyramid" of Fernando Noronha, a 

 black, phonolite mountain which is the most conspicuous land- 

 mark in all the South Atlantic, loomed out about nine miles distant 



in the following dawn. As we bore down toward the land in the 

 hazy light, the long strip of rough hills, which had first seemed 

 continuous, gradually broke up into the several islets of which the 

 group is composed. The sun, leaping above the equatorial horizon, 

 revealed a green lowland, well clothed with shrubs and small trees, 

 and a higher zone of bare, weathered peaks. The four tall, skeleton 

 " wireless " towers were probably the only features which had been 

 added to the landscape since Charles Darwin in the Beagle visited 

 this Brazilian penal settlement fourscore years ago. 



Fernando Noronha lies in latitude 3° 50' S., longitude 32° 25' W., 

 two hundred miles off the South American mainland from which 

 it is divided by a channel 13,000 feet in depth. The rugged group 

 is only about seven miles long, by one and a half in width. The 

 component islets, portions of the crater rim of an ancient volcano., 

 are of basaltic rocks, without sedimentary deposits, but with in- 

 jected dykes of phonolite or "clinkstone," the whole now almost 

 worn away by the action of the denuding tropical rainfall and the 

 battering seas, although the famous, columnar Pyramid still rises 

 to a height of 1,089 feet. Most of the smaller islets are bare of 

 vegetation except for a few grasses and sedges, some thickets of a 

 low shrub (Phyllanthus), and several leguminous vines. Parts of 

 the main island are covered by a variety of stunted trees and shrubs, 

 including an endemic fig (Ficus noronhce) and a leguminous tree 

 (Erythrina). There is a large percentage of widely distributed 

 tropical weeds, and a remarkable number of plants having edible 

 berries or seeds. Within the memory of man the leeward side of 

 the land was heavily forested, but the larger trees have long since 



