ENTOMOLOGY. 291 



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 Eng- 

 land. The poor people formerly used to bum 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 ! 



In my walks I passed more than once over the 

 grassy plain, bounded by deep valleys, on which 

 Longwood stands. Viewed from a short distance, 



of lurf 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 Phansus is exceed- 

 ingly 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 scaven- 

 gers to man. In Europe, beetles, which find support in the mat- 

 ter 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 I saw an instance where man had dis- 

 turbed 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. Pre- 

 viously to that time, the Kangaroo and some other small animals 

 were the only quadrupeds ; and their dung is of a very different 

 quality from that of their successors introduced by man. In Eng- 

 land the greater number of stercovorous beetles are confined in 

 their appetites ; that is, they do not depend indifferently on any 

 quadruped for the means of subsistence. The change, therefore, 

 in habits, which must have taken place 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 names of the foregoing insects. 



