1836.] CHANGES IX THE VEGETATION. 



adds that now this plain "is covered with fine sward, and is be- 

 come the finest 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 day scarcely a 

 single tree can be found there. It is also said that in 1709 there 

 were 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 they 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; eigh,ty~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 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 iinique Flora, excites our 

 curiosity. The eight land-shells, though now extinct, and one 

 living Succinea, are peculiar species found nowhere else. Mr. 

 C uming, 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, 



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

 (HOC. spec.) and au Oryctes, 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 it' 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 of turf arc richly manured, it is vain to seek the many kinds of 

 dung-feeding beetles, which occur so abundantly in Europe. I observed 



