time would not have permitted them to collect for themselves; and be provided horses and guides to take them to any part of the country which they should chuse to visit.  With all these advantages, however, their excursions were seldom pushed farther than three miles from the town, as they were only five days on shore; one of which they spent at home, in receiving the honour of a visit from the governor.  The season was the worst in the year for their purpose, as it was neither that of plants nor insects; a few of the plants, however, were procured in flower, by the kind attention of Dr Heberden, the chief physician of the island, and brother to Dr Heberden of London, who also gave them such specimens as he had in his possession, and a copy of his Botanical Observations; containing, among other things, a particular description of the trees of the island.  Mr Banks enquired after the wood which has been imported into England for cabinet-work, and is here called Madeira mahogany:  He learnt that no wood was exported from the island under that name, but he found a tree called by the natives Vigniatico, the Laurus indicus of Linnaeus, the wood of which cannot easily be distinguished from mahogany.  Dr Heberden had a book-case in which the vigniatico and mahogany were mixed, and they were no otherwise to be known from each other than by the colour, which, upon a nice examination, appears to be somewhat less brown in the vigniatico than the mahogany; it is therefore in the highest degree probable, that the wood known in England by the name of Madeira mahogany, is the vigniatico.

There is great reason to suppose that this whole island was, at some remote period, thrown up by the explosion of subterraneous fire, as every stone, whether whole or in fragments, that we saw upon it, appeared to have been burnt, and even the sand itself to be nothing more than ashes:  We did not, indeed, see much of the country, but the people informed us that what we did see was a very exact specimen of the rest.[62]

[Footnote 62:  This opinion about the volcanic origin of the island of Madeira, has found several advocates since the publication of this work.  The following quotation from a paper by the Hon. H.G.  Bennet, contained in the first volume of the Geological Society Transactions, may famish the inquisitive reader with a short summary of the principal appearances on which this opinion rests.  “To my mind, the most interesting geological facts, are, 1.  The intersection of the lava, by dikes at right angles with the strata.—­2.  The rapid dips which the strata make, particularly the overlaying of that of the Brazen Head to the eastward of Funchial, where the blue, grey, and red lavas are rolled up in one mass, as if they had slipped together from an upper stratum.—­3.  The columnar form of the lava itself, reposing on, and covered by beds of scoria, ashes, and pumice, which affords a strong argument for the volcanic origin of the columns themselves.  And, 4.  The veins of carbonate of lime and zeolite, which are not found here in solitary pieces, as in the vicinity of AEtna and Vesuvius, but are amid the lavas and in the strata of pumice and tufa, and are diffused on the lava itself, and occasionally crystallized in its cavities.”—­E.]