NARRATIVE OF THE CRUISE. 129 



and been scattered during the hurricanes. The feral fowls are very wary, like their pro- 

 genitors, the Indian Jungle-fowl, and are not at all easy to shoot. The entire bag 

 consisted of only one wild fowl. Flights of the brown Pelicans were met with passing 

 over-head, flying one after another along the shore almost always exactly over the same 

 spot on their way from one feeding ground to another. 



The late "Dr. R. von Willemoes Suhm states in his diary, that the doctor of the garrison 

 assured him that of the human internal parasites, only Ascaris and Ozyuris were common ; 

 Tcenia was very rare, and found, not among the natives, but usually among foreign sailors. 

 Phtkirius pubis and Pediculus capitis were both known but also very rare ; when upon 

 negroes they have a dark colour, a curious fact already known with regard to these 

 parasites on several dark human races, which recalls the correspondence between the 

 colour of the species of Anoplura, and that of the feathers of the birds they infest. 



One day a party landed on one of the small outliers of St. Thomas, Little Saba 

 Island, about a mile and a half distant from the main island. A Puffin (Puffinus sp.) 

 was nesting in holes amongst the grass, laying a single large white egg ; the birds 

 allowed themselves to be caught in the nest with the hand. In the beach of the island 

 there was being formed a reddish conglomerate sandstone rock, composed of the debris 

 of the rock of which the higher parts of the island consist, cemented together by 

 calcareous matter derived from the corals, and calcareous sand. This rock, which was 

 hard and compact, contained embedded in it plenty of the various corals from the beach 

 and large Turbo shells (Turbo pica), with their nacre quite fresh in lustre, and their 

 bright greenish colour unimpaired. In St. Thomas large examples of these Turbo shells, 

 as much as two inches in diameter at the base, are carried up far inland by terrestrial 

 Hermit-crabs. A large number of them were seen amongst the bush at an elevation of 

 1000 feet, some of them containing crabs, many empty. These large heavy sea shells 

 occurring in abundance at great heights, puzzled geologists, until it was found that they 

 were carried up by the crabs. On the shore at Little Saba Island grew a number of 

 plants of Guilandina bonduc. This plant bears a pod covered with prickles, containing 

 nearly spherical beans of about the size of a hazel nut, which have a perfectly smooth, as 

 it were, enamelled surface, and are flinty hard. These seeds float, and are carried by 

 ocean currents to distant shores, and in Tristan da Cunha and Bermuda are known as 

 " Sea-beans," and supposed to grow at the bottom of the sea ; they are also found 

 occasionally washed up at the Azores. 



The stay at St. Thomas extended to eight days, which time was fully occupied, as 

 far as the naval staff was concerned, in refitting and coaling the ship, in obtaining 

 magnetic and other observations on shore, and in correcting the charts. The evidences 

 of the destruction caused at St. Thomas by the hurricanes and occasional earthquake 

 waves, more especially by that of 1 8 6 7, were everywhere conspicuously apparent. Numbers 

 of small houses were constructed partially with the bulkheads of wrecked ships ; and 



(naer. chall. exp. — voi- i. — 1884). 17 



