60 Messrs. A. and E. Newton's Observations 
miles, ft was discovered by Columbus on bis second voyage, in 
1493; and the name bestowed on it by the “ grand Admiral 39 is 
still the one most frequently used in conversation. It is supposed 
to have been first settled by the English and Dutch about 1625, 
and for the next five-and-twenty years was, like all the adjacent 
islands, the scene of constant bloodshed. In 1650 the Spaniards 
made a descent upon it from Porto Rico, and completely de¬ 
stroyed the rising plantations, but in their turn were very shortly 
afterwards expelled by the French, who proceeded to found a 
colony there. The settlement proved to be very unhealthy: three 
governors in succession and two-thirds of the colonists died the 
first year; and, as it was deemed, and no doubt rightly so, that 
the insalubrity was caused by the dense and aged forests which 
covered the island, the survivors determined to burn them down. 
Accordingly, having set fire to them, they retreated to their 
ships and witnessed the conflagration, only returning when the 
fire had burnt itself out*. Since this, the island has had a high 
reputation for healthiness. 
That the simultaneous and sudden destruction by fire of all 
the woods in an island like this would have a marked and lasting 
effect upon its Fauna, no one can doubt; and one of its results 
may probably be traced in a fact ascertained by Herr Apothek 
Riise of St. Thomas, that in St. Croix there occur the “ dead 33 
shells of about a dozen species of terrestrial Mollusks, of which 
he has never found a single example inhabited by the living 
animal, though they are undoubtedly recent and not fossil 
forms. It is difficult to account for the extinction of so many 
species, unless it may be presumed that the changes brought 
about in the island by so great a fire, rendered it unsuitable for 
their longer habitation. It is fair to suppose that the Birds were 
affected, in at least some degree, like the Mollusks; particularly 
when we observe that, though St. Croix lies some way removed 
from the chain of the neighbouring islands, no one species is to be 
found there which is peculiar to it alone—the case with nearly 
all the West Indian islands, whose ornithology has been inves¬ 
tigated, being the reverse,—-and further when we discover, that 
* Abridged from ‘ An Historical Account of St. Thomas, W. I., with 
notices of St. Croix and St. John’s.’ By John P. Knox. New York, 1852.- 
