ST. HELENA 521 



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 ! 



In my walks I passed more than once over the grassy plain, 

 bounded by deep valleys, on which Longwood stands. Viewed 

 from a short distance, it appears like a respectable gentleman's 

 country-seat. In front there are a few cultivated fields, and 

 beyond them the smooth hill of coloured rocks called the Flag- 

 staff, and the rugged square black mass of the Barn, On the 

 whole the view was rather bleak and uninteresting. The only 

 inconvenience I suffered during my walks was from the impe- 

 tuous winds. One day I noticed a curious circumstance : 

 standing on the edge of a plain, terminated by a great cliff of 

 about a thousand feet in depth, I saw at the distance of a few 

 yards right to windward some tern, struggling against a very 

 strong breeze, whilst, where I stood, the air was quite calm. 



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 Phanasus, common in such situations. On the opposite 

 side of the Cordillera in Chiloe another species of Phanaeus 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 Phanseus, 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. Con- 

 sidering 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 countiy. 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 Kangaroo 

 and some other small animals were the only quadrupeds ; and their dung is of a very 

 different quality from that of their successors introduced by man. In England the 

 greater number of stercovorous beetles are confined in their appetites ; that is, they 

 do not depend indifferently on any quadniped for the means of subsistence. The 

 change, therefore, in habits, which must have taken place in Van Diemen's Land, i- 

 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 tlic 

 foregoing insects. 



