CHAP. XIV 



ST. HELENA 



297 



pecuniary point of view the error was a fatal one, for in the 

 next century (in 1810) another governor reports the total 

 destruction of the great forests by the goats, and that in 

 consequence the cost of importing fuel for government use 

 was 2,729/. 7s. Hd. for a single year ! About this time 

 large numbers of European, American, Australian, and 

 South African plants were imported, and many of these ran 

 wild and increased so rapidly as to drive out and 

 exterminate much of the relics of the native flora ; so that 

 now English broom gorse and brambles, willows and 

 poplars, and some common American, Cape, and Australian 

 weeds, alone meet the eye of the ordinary visitor. These, 

 in Sir Joseph Hookers opinion, render it absolutely 

 impossible to restore the native flora, which only lingers in 

 a few of the loftiest ridges and most inaccessible precipices, 

 and is rarely seen except by some exploring naturalist. 



This almost total extirpation of a luxuriant and highly 

 peculiar vegetation must inevitably have caused the 

 destruction of a considerable portion of the lower animals 

 which once existed on the island, and it is rather singular 

 that so much as has actually been discovered should be 

 left to show us the nature of the aboriginal fauna. Many 

 naturalists have made small collections during short visits, 

 but we owe our present complete knowledge of the two 

 most interesting groups of animals, the insects, and the 

 land-shells, mainly to the late Mr. T. Vernon Wollaston, 

 who, after having thoroughly explored Madeira and the 

 Canaries, undertook a voyage to St. Helena for the express 

 purpose of studying its terrestrial fauna, and resided for six 

 months (1875-76) in a high central position, whence the 

 loftiest peaks could be explored. The results of his labours 

 are contained in two volumes,^ which, like all that he 

 wrote, are models of accuracy and research, and it is to 

 these volumes that we are indebted for the interesting 

 and suggestive facts which we here lay before our readers. 



as fast as tliey grow. A few years of undisturbed vegetation would suffice 

 to cover such points with groves, and these would gradually extend them- 

 selves over soils where now scarcely any green thing but the bitter 

 colocynth and the poisonous foxglove is ever seen." 



1 Coleoptera Sanctce Relence, 1877 ; Testacea Atlantica, 1878, 



