502 



NATURE 



[April 2^, 1875 



Islands," which Mr. Melliss does not appear to have seen. 

 The volcanic bombs figured on Plate 14 would seem to 

 be much more probably explained as examples of sphe- 

 roidal weathering. Nor does the view of the curious dike 

 called the " chimney " (PI. 1 7) give any more indication 

 than the text (p. 72) of its very curious structure. This 

 is described and figured in Lyell's " Elements " (p. 610), 

 from Scale's " Geognosy of St. Helena," which also seems 

 to have eluded Mr. Melliss's attention. 



Part III. is occupied with the Zoology, beginning with 

 Homo sapiens, Linn., and finishing with the Spongida. 

 The list is swelled in every possible way, and a variety of 

 information which is, to say the most, hardly more than 

 "curious," is given under the different heads. Under 

 Mks decumaitns, Linn., we are told "that it is a fact that 

 one of these noxious animals " sprung out of Napoleon's 

 that when he was about to put it on after dinner. Canis 

 familiaris, Linn., suggests, on the principle of concomitant 

 variations, that the neglect of their education is the reason 

 of the absence of hydrophobia in St. Helena dogs. Equiis 

 caballus, Linn., introduces the governor's "modern car- 

 riage and pair of Hyde Park." The account of the 

 Cetacea is still more trivial. Mr. Harting's account of 

 the endemic land-bird ^Egialitis sancta-lichiuv is 

 given, and an enumeration of the other introduced and 

 indigenous species. But Mr. Melliss does not say any- 

 thing about the fossil eggs found in the beds of limestone 

 by Mr. Darwin and also written upon by Buckland. The 

 fish have been described by Dr. Giinlher, and the Mol- 

 lusca by Mr. Gwynn Jeffreys ; but only the names are 

 enumerated. Some furth er confirmation would seem to be 

 needed of the suggesti on that the extinct Bulimtis auris- 

 vulpina bored the holes found in the marl on the upper 

 part of the island. The insects have passed through the 

 hands of various entomologists : Mr. WoUaston has pub- 

 lished an account of the Beetles, Mr. Cambridge of the 

 Spiders. Excluding the cosmopolitan species which have 

 been manifestly introduced, the St. Helena list of 

 Coleoptera " possesses," according to Mr. Wollaston, 

 " nothing whatever in common with those of the three 

 Sub- African archipelagos which lie further to the north — 

 though the great development of the Curculionideous sub- 

 family Cossonidcs is a remarkable fact which is more or 

 less conspicuous throughout the whole of them." With 

 regard to the other groups there is no summary or com- 

 parison of distribution ; in fact, little more than a bare 

 enumeration of species. 



White ants were introduced into the island in 1840 in 

 some timber from a slave-ship. Mr. M'Lachlan has 

 identified the species as Tcrines tenuis, Hagen, peculiar 

 to South America. The mischief which it has done is 

 almost incredible, and it appears to have simply gradually 

 destroyed the whole of Jamestown. A considerable por- 

 tion of the books in the PubUc Library, especially theo- 

 logical literature, was devoured by them, and the whole 

 of the interior would be destroyed without the e.xterior of 

 the volumes seeming otherwise than intact. 



The flora of St. Helena is one of extraordinary interest. 

 When the island was discovered it was covered with 

 arboreous vegetation. Notwithstanding the belief of the 

 botanists of the United States Exploring Expedition 

 under Wilkes to the contrary, there seems no reason 

 to doubt the existence of the forests, or that their 



destruction during the past 360 years has been almost 

 entirely effected by the goats introduced by the Portu- 

 guese. The old trees gradually died, the young ones 

 were barked, and the seedlings were browsed down. In 

 this way all knowledge of a large part of the flora has 

 been completely lost. Even since the beginning of the 

 present century several species have become extinct, 

 while many were more abundant then which are only 

 represented now by single individuals. Fortunately, 

 however, the flora has been examined by several botanists. 

 Burchell spent five years in the island from 1S05 to 18 10, 

 and although he published no results he made a large 

 number of drawings and collected excellent specimens. 

 Roxburgh subsequently made a list of St. Helena plants, 

 and the island has also been twice visited by Dr. Hooker. 

 Had collections been made during the last century, more 

 of its extinct endemic species would no doubt be known, 

 but the forms that we are acquainted with are extremely 

 interesting. 



Mr. Melliss swells the list of flowering plants to 880. 

 But this is accomplished by including every kind of plant 

 introduced into or cultivated in the island. Spring and 

 winter wheat, the sugar-cane, and garden vegetables such 

 as cabbages and turnips, are all enumerated in precisely 

 the same type as the remnants of the peculiar endemic 

 flora. Mr. Melliss quotes freely from Dr. Hooker's inte- 

 resting address at the Nottingham meeting of the British 

 Association on Insular Floras, but he altogether omits 

 giving any distinct list of the indigenous as apart from 

 the introduced plants. By carefully going over his pages 

 it is possible to frame such a list, and it appears to con- 

 tain thirty-one flowering plants. Of these, except Cotn- 

 midendyon (Aster) glutinosum, which occurs at Ascension, 

 and Cynodon daetyloii, which is widely diffused in the 

 tropics, the whole appear to be absolutely restricted to 

 this minute speck of the earth's surface. They have, 

 moreover, all the aspect of a very ancient vegetation. 

 Exactly one-third of the species are Composita, but nine 

 out of the ten are shrubs or trees, a most unusual habit 

 of a growth in an order where the vast proportion of the 

 species are annuals or die down to the ground every 

 year. Mr. Darwin has pointed out the significance of 

 this :— 



" Islands often possess trees or bushes belonging to 

 orders which elsewhere include only herbaceous species ; 

 now trees, as Alph. De Candolle has shown, generally 

 have, whatever the cause maybe, confined ranges. Hence 

 trees would be little likely to reach distant oceanic islands ; 

 and an herbaceous plant, though it might have no chance 

 of successfully competing on a continent with many fully 

 developed trees, when established on an island and having 

 to compete with herbaceous plants alone, might readily 

 gain an advantage over them by growing taller and over- 

 topping \\itTS\P— Origin of Species, 4th ed., p. 467. 



Not less singular than the testimony to long isolation 

 borne by the habit of the species is the extremely obscure 

 geographical relations of the flora. Any amount of adap- 

 tive differentiation would be intelligible. But what is not 

 easily explicable is the want of relationship of the species 

 to those of adjacent continents. The connections are 

 really far more remote. Mr. Bentham has made some re- 

 marks upon this in his elaborate paper on the Compositae 

 {Joiirn. Linji. Soe., vol. xiii. p. 563) : — 



" Commidendron [to which genus Mr. Bentham refers 



