XXI 
ST. HELENA 
521 
might have been expected, are very few in number ; 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 ordinances 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 the 
soda from its ashes; 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 smooth hill of coloured rocks called the Flag¬ 
staff, and the rugged square black mass of the Barn. On the 
whole the view was rather bleak and uninteresting. The only 
inconvenience I suffered during my walks was from the impe¬ 
tuous winds. One day I noticed a curious circumstance: 
standing on the edge of a plain, terminated by a great cliff of 
about a thousand feet in depth, I saw at the distance of a few 
yards right to windward some tern, struggling against a very 
strong breeze, whilst, where I stood, the air was quite calm. 
of dung-feeding beetles which occur so abundantly in Europe. I observed only an 
Oryctes (the insects of this genus in Europe generally feed on decayed vegetable 
matter) and two species of Phanseus, common in such situations. On the opposite 
side of the Cordillera in Chiloe another species of Phanseus is exceedingly abundant, 
and it buries the dung of the cattle in large earthen balls beneath the ground. There 
is reason to believe that the genus Phanseus, before the introduction of cattle, acted 
as scavengers to man. In Europe, beetles, which find support in the matter which 
has already contributed towards the life of other and larger animals, are so numerous 
that there must be considerably more than one hundred different species. Con¬ 
sidering this, and observing what a quantity of food of this kind is 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. In Van Diemen’s 
Land, however, I found four species of Onthophagus, two of Aphodius, and one of 
a third genus, very abundant under the dung of cows ; yet these latter animals had 
been then 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 quadruped for the means of subsistence. The 
change, therefore, in habits, which must have taken place in Van Diemen’s Land, is 
highly remarkable. I am indebted to the Rev. F. W. Hope, who, I hope, will 
permit me to call him my master in Entomology, for giving me the names of the 
foregoing insects. 
