490 ST. HELENA. [cHaP. XXL 
Mr. Cuming, however, informs me that an English Helix is 
common here, its eggs no doubt having been imported in some 
of the many intrsduced plants. Mr. Cuming collected on the 
coast sixteen species of sea-shells, of which seven, as far as he 
knows, are confined to this island. Birds and insects,* as might 
have been expected, are very few in number; indeed I believe 
all the birds have been introduced within late years. Partridges 
and pheasants are tolerably abundant: the island is much too 
English not to be subject to strict game-laws. I was told of a 
more unjust sacrifice to such ordinances than I ever heard of 
even in England. The poor people formerly used to burn a 
plant, which grows on the coast-rocks, and export the soda from 
its ashes; but a peremptory order came out prohibiting this 
practice, and giving as a reason that the partridges would have 
nowhere to build! °: 
* Among these few insects, I was surprised to find a small Aphodius (nov 
spec.) and an Oryctes, both extremely numerous under dung. When the 
island was discovered it certainly possessed no quadruped, excepting perhaps 
a mouse: it becomes, therefore, a difficult point to ascertain, whether these 
stercovorous insects have since been imported by accident, or if aborigines, 
on what food they formerly subsisted... On the banks of the Plata, where, 
from the vast number of cattle and horses, the fine plains of turf are richly 
manored, it is vain to seek the many kinds of dung-feeding beetles, which 
occur so abundantly in Europe. I observed only an Oryctes (the insects-of 
this genus in Europe generally,feed on decayed vegetable matter) and two 
species of Phanzus, common in such situations.: On the opposite side of the 
Cordillera in Chiloe, another species of Phanzus is exceedingly abundant, 
and it buries the dung of the cattle in large earthen balls beneath the ground. 
There is reason to believe that the genus Phanzus, before the introduction 
of cattle, acted as scavengers to man. ‘In Europe, beetles, which find support 
in the matter which has already contributed towards the life of other and 
larger animals, are so numerous, that there must be considerably more than 
one hundred different species.. Considering this, and observing what a 
quantity of food of this kind is lost on the plains of La Plata, I imagined I 
saw an instance where man had disturbed that chain, by which so many 
animals are linked together in their native country. . In Van Diemen’s Land, 
however, I found four species'of Onthophagus, .two of Aphodius, and one of 
a third genus, very abundant under. the- dung.of cows; yet these latter 
animals had been then introduced’ only thirty-three years. Previously to 
that time, the Eames and some other..small animals were the only quad- 
rupeds; and their dung is of a very different quality from that of their suc- 
cessors introduced by man. In England the greater number of stercovorous 
beetles are confined in their appetites; that is, they do not depend indiffer- 
ently on any quadruped for the means of subsistence. The change, there- 
fore, in habits, which must have taken place in Van Diemen’s Land, is 
highly remarkable. I am indebted to the Rev. F. W. Hope, who, I hope, 
will permit me to call him my master in Entomology, for giving me the 
‘ names of the foregoing insects. 
