4-8—23 
18 
from the boats, and seem utterly devoid of fear. Two Bristle-thighed 
Curlews stalk about behind the tents on the high bare sand ridge. Scattered 
everywhere are Wedge-tailed Shearwaters in pairs squatting at the burrow 
mouths. Apparently they are but just arrived for they sit side by side 
cl 
bove ground or more rarely in the burrow. Most of the burrows are shallow 
as tho but just begun. The Tropics, too, have not laid. The Hawaiian Terns 
of this colony have 9 Ofo eggs, 9 f nests under construction and only a few 
young. Rea-footed Booby fresh eggs. Finch ? Love Terns incubated egg 
or young. 
Yes, the birds are here at least in so far as the common sea fowl go 
but the striking thing is the VEGETATION -- or utter lack of it, rather'. 
Verily, the damped rabbits have done their worst. As far as I can see with % 
the glasses and from our hurried trip down the islands there is not a 
I 
living bush or twig or spear of grass , left on the whole island outside of 
the two poor cocoanut trees and the 3 bushes near the house that Sula piscator 
has preempted -- and two of the latter are leafless I Apparently the swarm- 
ing host of rabbits has gone the limit. The once green island is today a 
desolate sand waste that might as well be a salt sink in one of our barest 
sand deserts. In fact the salt lagoon which occupies the whole center of 
the island, and to which all the fringing ridges of sand slope down, gives 
the simile striking aptitude. In my wildest pessimism I had not feared such 
utter extirpation of every living plant. I had hoped that the rabbits had 
wrought their own destruction in the general ruin, but those who went east 
and north report two small patches of close-cropped "pickle" weea(Sesuvium- 
sp?) that still support a remnant of the cursed host. The sailors killed 
V, orr, tjV "t" V* Qt H'nPQ ov-,/3 7PrjV',-'\ t..--* 4- To o 
3.11 probably SO were accounted 
- cd 
Wetmore collected a pair of seals (Monachus schaunslandi) before I had 
