584 



ST. HELENA. 



July, 1836, 



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 or- 

 dinances, 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 soda ; 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 hill of coloured rocks called the Flagstaff, 



on decayed vegetable matter) and two species of Phanaeus, common in 

 such situations. On the opposite side of the Cordillera in Chiloe, 

 another species of this genus is exceedingly abundant, and it buries the 

 dung of cattle in large earthen balls beneath the ground. There is 

 reason to believe that the genus Phanaeus, before the introduction of 

 cattle acted as scavengers to man. In Great Britain those beetles, which 

 find support in the matter, which has already contributed towards the life 

 of other and larger animals, are so numerous, that I suppose there are at 

 least one hundred different kinds. Considering this, and observing what 

 a quantity of food is thus 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. To this view, however, Van 

 Diemen's Land offers an exception (in the same manner as St. Helena 

 does in a much lesser degree), for I found there four species of On- 

 thophagus, two of Aphodius, and one of a third genus, very abundant 

 under the dung of cows ; yet these latter animals had then been 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 quadru- 

 ped for the means of subsistence. The change, therefore, in habits, which 

 must have taken place in Van Diemen's Land, is the more remarkable. — 

 I am indebted to the Rev. F. W. Hope, who, I hope, will permit me to 

 call him my master in Entomology, for information respecting the fore- 

 going, and other insects. 



