MAY 1771 ST. HELENA: ORIGIN OF LIFE 449 
pieces of the wood are frequently found in the valleys, of a 
fine black colour, and of a hardness almost equal to iron ; 
these, however, are almost always so short and so crooked 
that no use has yet been made of them. Whether the tree 
is the same as that which produces ebony on the Isle of 
Bourbon and the adjacent islands is impossible to know, as 
the French have not yet published any account of it. Other 
species of trees and plants, which seem to have been origin- 
ally natives of the island, are few in number. Insects there 
are also a few, and one species of snail, which inhabits only 
the tops of the highest ridges, and has probably been there 
ever since their original creation. 
Had our stay upon the island been longer, we should in 
all probability have discovered some more natural produc- 
tions, but in all likelihood not many; secluded as this roek 
is from the rest of the world by seas of immense extent, it 
is difficult to imagine how anything not originally created 
in that spot could by any accident arrive at it. For my 
part I confess I feel more wonder at finding a little snail 
on the top of the ridges of St. Helena, than in finding people 
upon America, or any other part of the globe. 
As the benefits of the land are so limited, the sea must 
often be applied to by the natives of this little rock; nor 
is she unmindful of their necessities, for she constantly 
supplies immense plenty, and no less variety, of fish. She 
would indeed be culpable did she do otherwise: she never 
met with a calamity equal to that of the earth in the general 
deluge, and her children, moreover, have the advantage 
of a free intercourse with all parts of the globe, habitable to 
them, without being driven to the necessity of tempting the 
dangers of an element unsuited to their natures; a fatal 
necessity under which too many even of us, lords of the 
ereation, yearly perish, and of all others through the wide 
bounds of creation how vast a proportion must die. The 
seed of a thistle supported by its down, the insect by its 
weak, and the bird by its more able, wing, may tempt the 
dangers of the sea; but of these how many millions must 
perish for one which arrives at the distance of twelve 
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