It is also said that in 1709 there were quantities of
dead trees in Sandy Bay; this place is now so utterly desert that
nothing but so well attested an account could have made me believe
that they could ever have grown there. The fact that the goats and
hogs destroyed all the young trees as they sprang up, and that in
the course of time the old ones, which were safe from their
attacks, perished from age, seems clearly made out. Goats were
introduced in the year 1502; eighty-six years afterwards, in the
time of Cavendish, it is known that they were exceedingly numerous.
More than a century afterwards, in 1731, when the evil was complete
and irretrievable, an order was issued that all stray animals
should be destroyed. It is very interesting thus to find that the
arrival of animals at St. Helena in 1501 did not change the whole
aspect of the island, until a period of two hundred and twenty
years had elapsed: for the goats were introduced in 1502, and in
1724 it is said "the old trees had mostly fallen." There can be
little doubt that this great change in the vegetation affected not
only the land-shells, causing eight species to become extinct, but
likewise a multitude of insects.
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