and of making the best of every occurrence. In short, he ought to
partake of the characteristic qualities of most sailors. Travelling
ought also to teach him distrust; but at the same time he will
discover, how many truly kind-hearted people there are, with whom he
never before had, or ever again will have any further communication,
who yet are ready to offer him the most disinterested assistance.
[1] After the volumes of eloquence which have poured forth on this
subject, it is dangerous even to mention the tomb. A modern traveller,
in twelve lines, burdens the poor little island with the following
titles,--it is a grave, tomb, pyramid, cemetery, sepulchre, catacomb,
sarcophagus, minaret, and mausoleum!
[2] It deserves notice, that all the many specimens of this shell found
by me in one spot, differ as a marked variety, from another set of
specimens procured from a different spot.
[3] Beatson's St. Helena. Introductory chapter, p. 4.
[4] Among these few insects, I was surprised to find a small Aphodius
(nov. spec.) and an Oryctes, both extremely numerous under dung. When
the island was discovered it certainly possessed no quadruped,
excepting perhaps a mouse: it becomes, therefore, a difficult point to
ascertain, whether these stercovorous insects have since been imported
by accident, or if aborigines, on what food they formerly subsisted. On
the banks of the Plata, where, from the vast number of cattle and
horses, the fine plains of turf are richly manured, it is vain to seek
the many kinds 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
Phanaeus, common in such situations. On the opposite side of the
Cordillera in Chiloe, another species of Phanaeus 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
Phanaeus, 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. Considering this, and observing what a quantity of
food of this kind is lost on the plains of La Plata, I imagined I saw
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