290 ST. HELENA. 



trees as they sprang up, and that in the course of 

 time the old ones, which were safe from their at- 

 tacks, perished from age, seems clearly made out. 

 Goats were introduced in the year 1502 ; eighty- 

 six years afterwards, in the time of Cavendish, it 

 is known that they were exceedingly numerous. 

 More than a century afterwards, in 1731, when 

 the evil was complete and irretrievable, an order 

 was issued that all stray animals should be de- 

 stroyed. It is very interesting thus to find that 

 the arrival of animals at St. Helena in 1501 did 

 not change the whole aspect of the island until a 

 period of two hundred and twenty years had 

 elapsed ; for the goats were introduced in 1502, 

 and in 1724 it is said " the old trees had mostly 

 fallen." There can be little doubt that this great 

 change in the vegetation affected not only the land- 

 shells, causing eight species to become extinct, but 

 likewise a multitude of insects. 



St. Helena, situated so remote from any conti- 

 nent, in the midst of a gi-eat ocean, and possessing 

 a unique Flora, excites our curiosity. The eight 

 land-shells, though now extinct, and one living 

 Succinea, are peculiar species found nowhere else. 

 Mr. Cuming, however, informs me that an English 

 Helix is common here, its eggs no doubt having 

 been imported in some 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 in- 

 sects,* as might have been expected, are very few 

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

 Aphodius (nor. spec.) and an Oryctes, both extremely numerous 

 under dung. When the island was discovered it certainly pos- 

 sessed 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 



