108 READINGS IN EVOLUTION, GENETICS, AND EUGENICS 
From a merely pecuniary point of view the abolition of these pri- 
meval forests has proved an irreparable loss; but from a scientific 
point of view the loss is incalculable. These forests served to harbour 
countless forms of life, which extended at least from the Miocene age, 
and which, having found there an ocean refuge, survived as the last 
remnants of a remote geological epoch. In those days, as Mr. Wallace 
observes, St. Helena must have formed a kind of natural museum or 
vivarium of archaic species of all classes, the interest of which we can 
now only surmise from the few remnants of those remnants, which are 
still left among the more inaccessible portions of the mountain peaks 
and crater edges. “These remnants of remnants are as follows: 
There is a total absence of all indigenous mammals, reptiles, 
fresh-water fish, and true land-birds. There is, however, a species of 
plover, allied to one in South Africa; but it is specifically distinct, and 
therefore peculiar to the island. The insect life, on the other hand, 
is abundant. Of beetles, no less than 129 species are believed to be 
aboriginal, and, with one single exception, the whole number are 
peculiar to the island. ‘‘But in addition to this large amount of 
specific peculiarity (perhaps unequalled anywhere else in the world) 
the beetles of this island are remarkable for their generic isolation, and 
for the altogether exceptional proportion in which the great divisions of 
the order are represented. The species belong to 39 genera, of which 
no less than 25 are peculiar to the island; and many of these are such 
isolated forms that it is impossible to find their allies in any particular 
country”? [Wallace]. More than two-thirds of all the species belong 
to one group of weevils—a circumstance which serves to explain the 
great wealth of beetle-population, the weevils being beetles which live 
in wood, and St. Helena having been originally a densely wooded 
island. This circumstance is also in accordance with the view that the 
peculiar insect fauna has been in large part evolved from ancestors 
which reached the island by means of floating timber; for, of course, 
no explanation can be suggested why special creation of this highly 
peculiar insect fauna should have run so disproportionately into the 
production of weevils. About two-thirds of the whole number of 
beetles, or over 80 species, show no close affinity with any existing 
insects, while the remaining third have some relations, though often 
very remote, with European and African forms. That this high 
degree of peculiarity is due to high antiquity is further indicated, 
according to our theory, by the large number of species which some of 
the types comprise. Thus, the 54 species of Cossonidae may be 
