1878.] HEMIPTERA OF ST. HELENA. 447 



African one, and characteristic of Southern extra-tropical Africa. 

 The genera Phylica, Pelargonium, Mesembryanthemum, Osteosper- 

 mum, and Wahlenbergia are eminently characteristic of Southern 

 extra-tropical Africa ; and I find amongst the others scarcely any 

 indication of an American parentage, except a plant referred to Phy- 

 salis 1 . The Ferns tell the same tale: of 26 species, 10 are abso- 

 lutely peculiar ; all the rest are African, though some are also Indian 

 and American. The botany of St. Helena is thus most interesting ; 

 it resembles none other in the peculiarity of its indigenous vegetation, 

 in the great rarity of the plants of other countries, or in the number 

 of species that have actually disappeared within the memory of living 

 man .... Probably 100 St.-Helena plants have thus disappeared 

 from the Systema Naturae since the first introduction of goats on the 

 island. Every one of these was a link in the chain of created beings, 

 which contained within itself evidence of the affinities of other species, 

 both living and extinct, but which evidence is now irrecoverably 

 lost. If such be the fate of organisms that lived in our day, what 

 folly it is to found theories on the assumed perfection of a geological 

 record which has witnessed revolutions in the vegetation of the globe 

 to which that of the flora of St. Helena is as nothing ! " 



Mr. Melliss, whose interesting work on St. Helena I have had fre- 

 quent occasion to refer to, says 2 : — "Other theories may be appealed 

 to in order to account for the presence and position of this wonderfully 

 curious little flora. Continental land at one time spreading over the 

 South Atlantic Ocean, with its own peculiar flora and fauna, has been 

 started as a plausible theory ; but the geological investigation of St. 

 Helena forbids us to look upon it as a remaining portion of some dis- 

 appearing continent to which the last vestige of a flora, still 

 struggling for existence, may be clinging; and the great depth of 

 ocean 3 around it also seems to deny the possibility of its connexion 

 at any time with either African or American land. Still we cannot 

 tell what geological changes, hundreds or even thousands of centuries 

 may have witnessed in that portion of the globe, leaving, perhaps, 

 this unique little floral remnant, now fast disappearing, as almost the 

 only record of what once was. So far, therefore, the manner in 

 which this once incandescent mass first received its flora, whether by 

 the agency of birds or atmospheric and oceanic currents, or direct 

 from that Hand by which all things were created, still remains un- 

 fathomed." 



Of the class Arachnida, Mr. Melliss 4 states :— " Mr. Cambridge says, 

 in reference to the character of this portion of the island fauna, after 

 his final examination of the several collections, that ' the European 

 stamp observed upon in regard to the spiders of the former collection 

 is thus equally marked in those now recorded and described.' It is 

 worthy of note that the native Spiders are, almost as a rule, least 



1 Subsequently referred to a new genus, Mellissia, Hk. f. 



2 p 225. 



8 " St. Helena is said to be separated from the continents of Africa and America 

 by a depth nowhere less than 12,000 feet." 

 * L. c. p. 206. 



