48o CHANGES IN THE PLAINS, [chap. xxi. 



piece of pasture on the island." The extent of surface, 

 probably covered by wood at a former period, is estimated 

 at no less than two thousand acres ; at the present '^ay 

 scarcely a single tree can be found there. It Is also said 

 that in 1709 there vvcre quantities of dead trees in Sandy 

 Bay ; this place is now so utterly desert, that nothing but 

 so well attested an account could have made me believe 

 that thfcy could ever have grown there. The fact that the 

 goats and hogs destroyed all the young trees as they sprang 

 up, and that in the course of time the old ones, which were 

 safe from their attacks, 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 

 Uiat 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 destroyed. 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 continent, in the 

 midst of a great 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 insects,* as might have been 

 expected, are very few in number; indeed I believe all the 



* Among these few insects, I was surprised to find a small Aphodtus {nov. 

 spec) and an Orjctcs, 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, whr,re, 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 

 E^eneralJy frcd on deca)'ed vegetable matter) and two species of Phanseus, 



