Extinction of Animals at St. Helena. \ 2 i 



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 tested an account could have made me be- 

 lieve 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 at- 

 tacks, perished from age, seems clearly made out. 

 Goats were introduced in the year 1502; eighty-six 

 years afterwards, it is known that they were exceed- 

 ingly 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 

 but little doubt that this great change in the vegeta- 

 tion affected not only the land-shells, causing eight 

 species to become extinct, but likewise a multitude 

 of insects." 



From St. Helena the Beagle made Ascencion, a 

 volcanic island, where was found an interesting geo- 

 logical field, and from here bore away for Bahia 

 again, to complete the chronometrical measurement 

 of the world, around which she had passed. On the 

 way up the coast the ship stopped at Pernambuco 

 until about the middle of August. In his note-book 



