MY ISLANDS. 19 



Up to the moment of the arrival of man in the archipel- 

 ago, the whole population, animal and vegetable, consisted 

 entirely of these waifs and strays, blown out to sea from 

 Europe or Africa, and modified more or less on the spot 

 in accordance with the varying needs of their new home. 

 But the advent of the obtrusive human species spoilt the 

 game at once for an independent observer. Man 

 immediately introduced oranges, bananas, sweet potatoes, 

 grapes, plums, almonds, and many other trees or shrubs, 

 in which, for selfish reasons, he was personally 

 interested. At the same time he quite unconsciously 

 and unintentionally stocked the islands with a fine 

 vigorous crop of European weeds, so that the number of 

 kinds of flowering plants included in the modern flora 

 of my little archipelago exceeds, I think, by fully one- 

 half that which I remember before the date of the 

 Portuguese occupation. In the same way, besides his 

 domestic animals, this spoil-sport colonist man brought 

 in his train accidentally rabbits, weasels, mice, and rats, 

 which now abound in many parts of the group, so that 

 the islands have now in effect a wild mammalian fauna. 

 What is more odd, a small lizard has also got about in 

 the walls not as you would imagine, a native-born 

 Portuguese subject, but of a kind found only in Madeira 

 and Teneriffe, and, as far as I could make out at the 

 time, it seemed to me to come over with cuttings of 

 Madeira vines for planting at St. Michael's. It was about 

 the same time, I imagine, that eels and gold-fish first got 

 loose from glass globes into the ponds and water-courses. 



I have forgotten to mention, what you will no doubt 

 yourself long since have inferred, that my archipelago is 



c 2 



