XXI 
VARIATION IN THE IMPORTED RATS 
523 
may be compared to a huge ship kept in first-rate order. I 
could not help, when admiring the active industry which had 
created such effects out of such means, at the same time 
regretting that it had been wasted on so poor and trifling an 
end. M. Lesson has remarked with justice, that the English 
nation alone would have thought of making the island of 
Ascension a productive spot; any other people would have 
held it as a mere fortress in the ocean. 
Near this coast nothing grows ; farther inland, an occasional 
green castor-oil plant, and a few grasshoppers, true friends of 
the desert, may be met with. Some grass is scattered over 
the surface of the central elevated region, and the whole much 
resembles the worse parts of the Welsh mountains. But, scanty 
as the pasture appears, about six hundred sheep, many goats, a 
few cows and horses, all thrive well on it. Of native animals, 
land-crabs and rats swarm in numbers. Whether the rat is 
really indigenous, may well be doubted ; there are two varieties 
as described by Mr. Waterhouse ; one is of a black colour, 
with fine glossy fur, and lives on the grassy summit; the other 
is brown-coloured and less glossy, with longer hairs, and lives 
near the settlement on the coast. Both these varieties are 
one-third smaller than the common black rat (M. rattus); and 
they differ from it both in the colour and character of their fur, 
but in no other essential respect. I can hardly doubt that these 
rats (like the common mouse, which has also run wild) have 
been imported, and, as at the Galapagos, have varied from the 
effect of the new conditions to which they have been exposed : 
hence the variety on the summit of the island differs from that 
on the coast. Of native birds there are none ; but the guinea- 
fowl, imported from the Cape de Verd Islands, is abundant, 
and the common fowl has likewise run wild. Some cats, which 
were originally turned out to destroy the rats and mice, have 
increased, so as to become a great plague. The island is 
entirely without trees, in which, and in every other respect, it 
is very far inferior to St. Helena. 
One of my excursions took me towards the S.W. extremity 
of the island. The day was clear and hot, and I saw the island, 
not smiling with beauty, but staring with naked hideousness. 
The lava streams are covered with hummocks, and are 
rugged to a degree which, geologically speaking, is not of easy 
