and rugged, bounded for the most part by
precipices, rising from ocean depths of 17,000 feet, to a height above
the sea-level of nearly 3,000. When first discovered it was richly
clothed with forests; but these were all destroyed by human agency
during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. The records of civilization
present no more lamentable instance of this kind of destruction. From a
merely pecuniary point of view the abolition of these primeval forests
has proved an irreparable loss; but from a scientific point of view the
loss is incalculable. These forests served to harbour countless forms of
life, which extended at least from the Miocene age, and which, having
found there an ocean refuge, survived as the last remnants of a remote
geological epoch. In those days, as Mr. Wallace observes, St. Helena
must have formed a kind of natural museum or vivarium of archaic species
of all classes, the interest of which we can now only surmise from the
few remnants of those remnants, which are still left among the more
inaccessible portions of the mountain peaks and crater edges. These
remnants of remnants are as follows.

There is a total absence of all indigenous mammals, reptiles,
fresh-water fish, and true land-birds. There is, however, a species of
plover, allied to one in South Africa; but it is specifically distinct,
and therefore peculiar to the island. The insect life, on the other
hand, is abundant. Of beetles no less than 129 species are believed to
be aboriginal, and, with one single exception, the whole number are
peculiar to the island. "But in addition to this large amount of
specific peculiarity (perhaps unequalled anywhere else in the world),
the beetles of this island are 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 39 genera,
of which no less than 25 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[24]." More than two-thirds of all the species
belong to the group of weevils--a circumstance which serves to explain
the great wealth of beetle-population, the weevils being beetles which
live in wood, and St. Helena having been originally a densely wooded
island. This circumstance is also in accordance with the view that the
peculiar insect fauna has been in large part evolved from ancestors
which reached