456 KEELING ISLAND. [cHAv. Xx. 
a ship from the Mauritius, wrecked here. These rats are con- 
sidered by Mr. Waterhouse as identical with the English kind, 
but they are smaller, and more brightly coloured. There are 
no true land-birds; for a snipe and a rail (Rallus Phillippensis), 
though living entirely in the dry herbage, belong to the order of 
Waders. Birds of this order are said to occur on several of the 
small low islands in the Pacific. At Ascension, where there is 
no land bird, a rail (Porphyrio simplex) was shot near the 
summit of the mountain, and it was evidently a solitary straggler. 
At Tristan d’Acunha, where, according to Carmichael, there are 
only two land birds, there is a coot. From these facts I believe 
that the waders, after the innumerable web-footed species, are 
generally the first colonists of small isolated islands. I may add, 
that whenever I noticed birds, not of oceanic species, very far 
out at sea, they always belonged to this order; and hence they 
would naturally become the earliest colonists of any remote point 
of land. 
Of reptiles I saw only one small lizard. Of insects I took 
pains to collect every kind. Exclusive of spiders, which were 
numerous, there were thirteen species.* Of these, one only was 
a beetle. .A small ant swarmed by thousands under the loose dry 
blocks of coral, and was the only true insect which was abun- 
dant. Although the productions of the land are thus scanty, if 
we look to the waters of the surrounding sea, the number of 
organic beings is indeed infinite. Chamisso has described} the 
natural history of a lagoon-island in the Radack Archipelago ; 
and it is remarkable how closely its inhabitants, in number and 
kind, resemble those of Keeling Island. There is one lizard 
and two waders, namely, a snipe and curlew. Of plants there 
are nineteen species, including a fern; and some of these are the 
same with those growing here, though on a spot so immensely 
remote, and in a different ocean. 
The long strips of land, forming the linear islets, have been 
raised only to that height to which the surf can throw fragments 
of coral, and the wind heap up calcareous sand. The solid flat 
* The thirteen species belong to the following orders:—In the Coleoptera, 
a minute Elater; Orthoptera, a Gryllus and a Blatta; Hemiptera, one spe- 
cies; Homoptera, two; Neuroptera, a Chrysopa; Mymenoptera, two ants: 
Lepidoptera nocturna, a Diopea, and a Pterophorus(?); Diptera, two specics. 
f Kotzebue’s First Voyage, vol. iii., p. 222. 
