1 28 HISTORY OF THE [book iii. 
Such is the information which I have collected 
concerning the civil history and present state of 
Dominica, for great part of which lam indebted 
to a late publication by Mr. Atwood.* Nothing 
now remains but to set forth the particulars and va¬ 
lue of its productions, which I shall adopt, as in 
other cases, from the return of the inspector-gene¬ 
ral for the year 1787. 
sons are short, stout, and well made, but they disfigure their faces by 
flattening their foreheads in infancy. They live chiefly by fishing in 
the rivers and the sea, or by fowling in the woods, in both which pur¬ 
suits they use their bows and arrows with wonderful dexterity. It is 
said they will kill the smallest bird with an arrow at a great distance, 
or transfix a fish at a considerable depth in the sea. They display al¬ 
so very great ingenuity in making curious wrought panniers, or bas¬ 
kets of silk grass, or the leaves and bark of trees.” 
* See the History of the Island of Dominica, by Mr. Thomas At¬ 
wood, 1791. Treating of the natural productions of this island, Mr. 
Atwood gives the following account of an insect, which he calls the 
vegetable fly. “It is of the appearance and size of a small cockcha¬ 
fer, and buries itself in the ground, where it dies ; and from its body 
springs up a small plant, which resembles a young coffee tree, only 
that its leaves are smaller. The plant is often overlooked, from the 
supposition people have of its being no other than a coffee plant; but 
on examining it properly, the difference is easily distinguished; the 
head, body, and feet of the insect appearing at the foot, as perfect as 
when alive.” This account is extraordinary, but not more surprising 
than the Rev. Nicholas Collins’s description, in the American Philo¬ 
sophical Transactions, (Introduction to vol. iii. p. 33), of a certain zoo- 
phyton in the Ohio country, which, (he declares), is alternately vege¬ 
table and animal; for having crawled about the woods in its animal 
state until it grows weary of that mode of existence, it fixes itself 
in the ground, and becomes a stately plant, <with a stem issuing from 
its mouth." I give these accounts as I find them, without vouching 
for the veracity of either. 
