I 



ST. HELENA 97 



The Terror has been a sad drawback to us, having every 

 now and then to shorten sail for her. I cannot tell you how 

 dehghted we were to get here (St. Helena), having been 

 upon salt Junk for 74 days, with hard biscuit for vege- 

 tables. . . . The weather has been during the voyage very 

 fine indeed, though very hot at times, so much so that 

 sleeping upon deck is quite delightful. ... 



St. Helena as a colonised island was very different from 

 the others. Appealed to as a fount of botanical culture he 

 pokes fun at himself as a practical gardener. Strawberries 

 and similar European plants refused to fruit in the absence of 

 a regular summer and winter season. He suggested on theo- 

 retical grounds two alternative methods of checking their ' run- 

 ning to leaf ' ; ' between these two methods I hope I have 

 hit a gardener's plan, or what will look like one ; if the more 

 orthodox plan succeeds my suggestion will, I hope, be looked 

 upon as the invention of a fertile brain instead of the 

 guess of an ignoramus.' 



But * the plant that pleased him more than any other ' 

 was a fine Araucaria (monkey puzzle). Few specimens then 

 existed in Britain, and this, as a new species from Brazil, 

 is described in full detail. The fruit, it was asserted, never 

 ripened ; but his keen eye noted several seedlings which the 

 owner of the garden had never observed. He has a boyish 

 delight in climbing the spiny tree and knocking off some cones, 

 because travellers declared the tree unscalable, and at sea he 

 writes, * even now I look at the cones slung up in my cabin by 

 a true lover's knot with great satisfaction.' 



But here also he is confronted by his favourite problems of 

 geographical distribution, of the interaction of imported animals 

 and plants on the old flora. The climate differs on the wet 

 side of Diana's Peak ; so do the plants. He perceives a striking 

 phase of what was afterwards to be called the * struggle for 

 existence ' bluntly revealed in the action of animals on plants, 

 plants on each other, and plants again on animals, owing to 

 the introduction of new forms of life into the island. 



So, he writes in his Journal from his passing notes — time 

 forbidding fuller observations : 



