490 ST. HELENA. [chap, xxi 



Mr. Cuming, however, informs me that an English Helix is 



common here, its eggs no doubt having been imported in somt 



of the many introduced plants. Mr. Cuming collected on the 



coast sixteen species of sea-shells, of which seven, as far as he 



knows, are confined to this island. Birds and insects,* as might 



have been expected, are very few in number ; indeed I believe 



all the birds have been introduced within late years. Partridges 



and pheasants are tolerably abundant : the island is much too 



English not to be subject to strict game-laws. I was told of a 



more unjust sacrifice to such ordinances than I ever heard of 



even in England. The poor people formerly used to burn a 



plant, which grows on the coast-rocks, and export the soda from 



its ashes; but a peremptory order came out prohibiting this 



practice, and giving as a reason that the partridges would have 



nowhere to build ! 



* Among these few insects, I was surprised to find a small Aphodius {nab, 

 spec.) and an Oryctes, both extremely numerous under dung. When the 

 island was discovered it certainly possessed no quadruped, excepting perhaps 

 a mouse : it becomes, therefore, a difficult point to ascertain, whether these 

 stercovorous insects have since been imported by accident, or if aborigines, 

 on what food they formerly subsisted. On the banks of the Plata, where, 

 from the vast number of cattle and horses, the fine plains of turf are richly 

 manured, it is vain to seek the many kinds of dung-feeding beetles, which 

 occur so abundantly in Europe. I observed only an Oryctes (the insects of 

 this genus in Europe generally feed on decayed vegetable matter) and two 

 species of Phanaeus, common in such situations. On the opposite side of the 

 Cordillera in Chiloe, another species of Phanaeus is exceedingly abundant, 

 and it buries the dung of the cattle in large earthen balls beneath the ground. 

 There is reason to believe that the genus Phanaeus, before the introduction 

 of cattle, acted as scavengers to man. In Europe, beetles, which find support 

 in the matter which has already contributed towards the life of other and 

 larger animals, are so numerous, that there must be considerably more than 

 one hundred different species. Considering this, and observing what a 

 quantity of food of this kind is lost on the plains of La Plata, I imagined 1 

 saw an instance where man had disturbed that chain, by which so many 

 animals are linked together in their native country. In Van Diemen's Land, 

 however, I found four species of Onthophagus, two of Aphodius, and one of 

 a third genus, very abundant under the dung of cows; yet these latter 

 animals had been then introduced only thirty -three years. Previously to 

 that time, the Kangaroo and some other small animals were the on" v quad- 

 rupeds ; and their dung is of a very different quality from that of their suc- 

 cessors introduced by man. In England the greater number of stercovorous 

 beetles are confined in their appetites ; that is, they do not depend indiffer- 

 ently on any quadruped for the means of subsistence. The change, there- 

 fore, in habits, which must have taken pkee in Van Diemen's Land, is 

 highly remarkable. I am indebted to the Rev. F. W. Hope, who, I hope, 

 will permit me to call him my master in Entomology, for giving me the 

 sanies of the foregoing insects. 



