TRACTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS, &c. 3 



Those young plants are preferred, by the goats, to the finest pas- 

 tures : they are consequently, when exposed to their depredations, 

 greedily devoured.* — Even the leaves of the old trees, when within 

 reach, do not escape their ravages. The young trees having 

 been in this manner cut off, and the parent trees having perished 

 through age, it is no wonder there should be no succession ; and 

 this is the obvious cause that, since the period of the introduction 

 of goats, this formerly woody island has been wholly denuded. 

 Some of the peaks and highest lands, owing to their steep and 

 abrupt acclivities, are the only places which have withstood their 

 unceasing' depredations. 



To the goats, therefore, is solely to be ascribed the total ruin 

 of the forests, an evil which is now severely felt by every indivi- 

 dual, and which would undoubtedly become much more serious, 

 if the Company should add the freight and charges to the price 



* The following extract of a letter from the Government of St. Helena to the Court of 

 Directors, dated 9th of July, 1745, affords a positive proof that the disappearance of the 

 forests of St. Helena is entirely to be ascribed to the goats — and not to any physical 

 cause, or change, which is supposed by a late writer to have produced a similar effect upon 

 some hills in Ireland — that, in former times, were covered with trees. 



" Finding," say the Governor and Council, " that great quantities of ebony trees, which 

 " grew in and about Peak Gut, in their tender growth, were barked and destroyed by the 

 " goats that ranged there, we thought it for your Honors' interest, for the preservation of 

 " the wood, and the welfare of the island, to order the goats there to be killed." — To this 

 representation the Court replied, " The goats are not to be destroyed, being more useful 

 " than ebony-" 



Such is the aptness of the seeds of the indigenous trees of St. Helena to take root, that 

 I have often observed myriads of seedlings spring up, amongst the grass, immediately 

 after the setting in of the rains : but these were of course nipt off by the cattle. All that 

 is here stated, and many other circumstances which have come to my knowledge^ impress 

 me with a strong conviction that if St. Helena were again uninhabited, and if cattle of 

 every description were removed, for a period of twenty years, the island would again be 

 covered with wood — Mai/ 1S13. 



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