Sir W. Symonds, one
of the few persons who have landed here, informs me that he saw the
crabs dragging even the young birds out of their nests, and
devouring them. Not a single plant, not even a lichen, grows on
this islet; yet it is inhabited by several insects and spiders. The
following list completes, I believe, the terrestrial fauna: a fly
(Olfersia) living on the booby, and a tick which must have come
here as a parasite on the birds; a small brown moth, belonging to a
genus that feeds on feathers; a beetle (Quedius) and a woodlouse
from beneath the dung; and lastly, numerous spiders, which I
suppose prey on these small attendants and scavengers of the
waterfowl. The often-repeated description of the stately palm and
other noble tropical plants, then birds, and lastly man, taking
possession of the coral islets as soon as formed, in the Pacific,
is probably not quite correct; I fear it destroys the poetry of
this story, that feather and dirt-feeding and parasitic insects and
spiders should be the first inhabitants of newly formed oceanic
land.
The smallest rock in the tropical seas, by giving a foundation for
the growth of innumerable kinds of seaweed and compound animals,
supports likewise a large number of fish.
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