XXI VARIATION IN THE IMPORTED RATS 523 



may be compared to a huge ship kept in first-rate order. I 

 could not help, when admiring the active industry which had 

 created such effects out of such means, at the same time 

 regretting that it had been wasted on so poor and trifling an 

 end. M. Lesson has remarked with justice, that the English 

 nation alone would have thought of making the island of 

 Ascension a productive spot ; any other people would have 

 held it as a mere fortress in the ocean. 



Near this coast nothing grows ; farther inland, an occasional 

 green castor-oil plant, and a few grasshoppers, true friends of 

 the desert, may be met with. Some grass is scattered over 

 the surface of the central elevated region, and the whole much 

 resembles the worse parts of the Welsh mountains. But, scanty 

 as the pasture appears, about six hundred sheep, many goats, a 

 few cows and horses, all thrive well on it. Of native animals, 

 land-crabs and rats swarm in numbers. Whether the rat is 

 really indigenous,, may well be doubted ; there are two varieties 

 as described by Mr. Waterhouse ; one is of a black colour, 

 with fine glossy fur, and lives on the grassy summit ; the other 

 is brown-coloured and less glossy, with longer hairs, and lives 

 near the settlement on the coast. Both these varieties are 

 one-third smaller than the common black rat (M. rattus) ; and 

 they differ from it both in the colour and character of their fur, 

 but in no other essential respect. I can hardly doubt that these 

 rats (like the common mouse, which has also run wild) have 

 been imported, and, as at the Galapagos, have varied from the 

 effect of the new conditions to which they have been exposed : 

 hence the variety on the summit of the island differs from that 

 on the coast. Of native birds there are none ; but the guinea- 

 fowl, imported from the Cape de Verd Islands, is abundant, 

 and the common fowl has likewise run wild. Some cats, which 

 were originally turned out to destroy the rats and mice, have 

 increased, so as to become a great plague. The island is 

 entirely without trees, in which, and in every other respect, it 

 is very far inferior to St. Helena. 



One of my excursions took me towards the S.W. extremity 

 of the island. The day was clear and hot, and I saw the island, 

 not smiling with beauty, but staring with naked hideousness. 

 The lava streams are covered with hummocks, and are 

 rugged to a degree which, geologically speaking, is not of easy 



