yet the general aspect of the island is now so barren and forbidding that some persons find it difficult to believe that it was once all green and fertile. The cause of the change is, however, very easily explained. The rich soil formed by decomposed volcanic rock and vegetable deposits could only be retained on the steep slopes so long as it was protected by the vegetation to which it in great part owed its origin. When this was destroyed, the heavy tropical rains soon washed away the soil, and has left a vast expanse of bare rock or sterile clay. This irreparable destruction was caused in the first place by goats, which were introduced by the Portuguese in 1513, and increased so rapidly that in 1588, they existed in thousands. These animals are the greatest of all foes to trees, because they eat off the young seedlings, and thus prevent the natural restoration of the forest. They were, however, aided by the reckless waste of man. The East India Company took possession of the island in 1651, and about the year 1700 it began to be seen that the forests were fast diminishing, and required some protection. Two of the native trees, redwood and ebony, were good for tanning, and to save trouble the bark was wastefully stripped from the trunks only, the remainder being left to rot; while in 1709 a large quantity of the rapidly disappearing ebony was used to burn lime for building fortifications! By the MSS. records quoted in Mr. Melliss' interesting volume on St. Helena,[[119]] it is evident that the evil consequences of allowing the trees to be destroyed were clearly foreseen, as the following passages show: "We find the place called the Great Wood in a flourishing condition, full of young trees, where the hoggs (of which there is a great abundance) do not come to root them up. But the Great Wood is miserably lessened and destroyed within our memories, and is not near the circuit and length it was. But we believe it does not contain now less than fifteen hundred acres of fine woodland and good ground, but no springs of water but what is salt or brackish, which we take to be the reason that that part was not inhabited when the people first
chose out their settlements and made plantations; but if wells could be sunk, which the governor says he will attempt when we have more hands, we should then think it the most pleasant and healthiest part of the island. But as to healthiness, we don't think it will hold so if the wood that keeps the land warm were destroyed, for then the rains, which are violent here, would carry away the upper soil, and it being a clay marl underneath would produce but little; as it is, we think in case it were enclosed it might be greatly improved" ... "When once this wood is gone the island will soon be ruined" ... "We viewed the wood's end which joins the Honourable Company's plantation called the Hutts, but the wood is so destroyed that the beginning of the Great Wood is now a whole mile beyond that place, and all the soil between being washed away, that distance is now entirely barren." (MSS. records, 1716.) In 1709 the governor reported to the Court of Directors of the East India Company that the timber was rapidly disappearing, and that the goats should be destroyed for the preservation of the ebony wood, and because the island was suffering from droughts. The reply was, "The goats are not to be destroyed, being more valuable than ebony." Thus, through the gross ignorance of those in power, the last opportunity of preserving the peculiar vegetation of St. Helena, and preventing the island from becoming the comparatively rocky desert it now is, was allowed to pass away.[[120]] Even in a mere
pecuniary point of view the error was a fatal one, for in the next century (in 1810) another governor reports the total destruction of the great forests by the goats, and that in consequence the cost of importing fuel for government use was 2,729l. 7s. 8d. for a single year! About this time large numbers of European, American, Australian, and South African plants were imported, and many of these ran wild and increased so rapidly as to drive out and exterminate much of the relics of the native flora; so that now English broom gorse and brambles, willows and poplars, and some common American, Cape, and Australian weeds, alone meet the eye of the ordinary visitor. These, in Sir Joseph Hooker's opinion, render it absolutely impossible to restore the native flora, which only lingers in a few of the loftiest ridges and most inaccessible precipices, and is rarely seen except by some exploring naturalist.
This almost total extirpation of a luxuriant and highly peculiar vegetation must inevitably have caused the destruction of a considerable portion of the lower animals which once existed on the island, and it is rather singular that so much as has actually been discovered should be left to show us the nature of the aboriginal fauna. Many naturalists have made small collections during short visits, but we owe our present complete knowledge of the two most interesting groups of animals, the insects, and the land-shells, mainly to the late Mr. T. Vernon Wollaston, who, after having thoroughly explored Madeira and the Canaries, undertook a voyage to St. Helena for the express purpose of studying its terrestrial fauna, and resided for six months (1875-76) in a high central position, whence the loftiest peaks could be explored. The results of his labours are contained in two volumes,[[121]] which, like all that he wrote, are models of accuracy and research, and it is to these volumes that we are indebted for the interesting and suggestive facts which we here lay before our readers.
Insects—Coleoptera.—The total number of species of beetles hitherto observed at St. Helena is 203, but of these no less than seventy-four are common and wide-spread insects, which have certainly, in Mr. Wollaston's opinion, been introduced by human agency. There remain 129 which are believed to be truly aborigines, and of these all but one are found nowhere else on the globe. But in addition to this large amount of specific peculiarity (perhaps unequalled anywhere else in the world) the beetles of this island are equally remarkable for their generic isolation, and for the altogether exceptional proportion in which the great divisions of the order are represented. The species belong to thirty-nine genera, of which no less than twenty-five are peculiar to the island; and many of these are such isolated forms that it is impossible to find their allies in any particular country. Still more remarkable is the fact, that more than two-thirds of the whole number of indigenous species are Rhyncophora or weevils, while more than two-fifths (fifty-four species) belong to one family, the Cossonidæ. Now although the Rhyncophora are an immensely numerous group and always form a large portion of the insect population, they nowhere else approach such a proportion as this. For example, in Madeira they form one-sixth of the whole of the indigenous Coleoptera, in the Azores less than one-tenth, and in Britain one-seventh. Even more interesting is the fact that the twenty genera to which these insects belong are every one of them peculiar to the island, and in many cases have no near allies elsewhere, so that we cannot but look on this group of beetles as forming the most characteristic portion of the ancient insect fauna. Now, as the great majority of these are wood borers, and all are closely attached to vegetation and often to particular species of plants, we might, as Mr. Wollaston well observes, deduce the former luxuriant vegetation of the island from the great preponderance of this group, even had we not positive evidence that it was at no distant epoch densely forest-clad. We will now proceed briefly to indicate the numbers and peculiarities of each of the families of beetles which enter into the St. Helena fauna, taking them, not in
systematic order, but according to their importance in the island.
1. Rhyncophora.—This great division includes the weevils and allied groups, and, as above stated, exceeds in number of species all the other beetles of the island. Four families are represented; the Cossonidæ, with fifteen peculiar genera comprising fifty-four species, and one minute insect (Stenoscelis hylastoides) forming a peculiar genus, but which has been found also at the Cape of Good Hope. It is therefore impossible to say of which country it is really a native, or whether it is indigenous to both, and dates back to the remote period when St. Helena received its early emigrants. All the Cossonidæ are found in the highest and wildest parts of the island where the native vegetation still lingers, and many of them are only found in the decaying stems of tree-ferns, box-wood, arborescent Compositæ, and other indigenous plants. They are all pre-eminently peculiar and isolated, having no direct affinity to species found in any other country. The next family, the Tanyrhynchidæ, has one peculiar genus in St. Helena, with ten species. This genus (Nesiotes) is remotely allied to European, Australian, and Madeiran insects of the same family: the habits of the species are similar to those of the Cossonidæ. The Trachyphlœidæ are represented by a single species belonging to a peculiar genus not very remote from a European form. The Anthribidæ again are highly peculiar. There are twenty-six species belonging to three genera, all endemic, and so extremely peculiar that they form two new subfamilies. One of the genera, Acarodes, is said to be allied to a Madeiran genus.
2. Geodephaga.—These are the terrestrial carnivorous beetles, very abundant in all parts of the world, especially in the temperate regions of the northern hemisphere. In St. Helena there are fourteen species belonging to three genera, one of which is peculiar. This is the Haplothorax burchellii, the largest beetle on the island, and now very rare. It resembles a large black Carabus. There is also a peculiar Calosoma, very distinct, though resembling in some respects certain African species. The rest of the
Geodephaga, twelve in number, belong to the wide-spread genus Bembidium, but they are altogether peculiar and isolated, except one, which is of European type, and alone has wings, all the rest being wingless.