The most marvelous of the islands mentioned in medieval legend were those which St. Brandan visited.[1051] The first one he came to, a high and rocky crag rising abruptly out of the sea, was doubtless suggested to the mind of the poet by one of the forbidding islets in the seas off the western coast of Ireland. Thence the saint and his crew voyaged in turn to an island entirely covered with sheep, to one that proved to be the back of a gigantic fish called Jasconius, to one full of miraculous birds that could speak, to one that put them in mind of Paradise, to a rocky isle full of forges and smiths, to an isle where there dwelt a certain hermit, Paul, who had lived there forty years without food but for thirty years had been fed by a certain beast;[1052] and finally the saint himself attained the island which was the goal of all his wanderings, the Saints’ Land of Promise (Terra repromissionis sanctorum), or Paradise—a reminiscence perhaps of the Hesperides, or Happy Islands, of Greek mythology. Giraldus describes an isle off the Irish coast which would seem to be akin to Brandan’s Jasconius.[1053] Doubts were raised as to whether this peculiar island was a whale or some other monster or whether it was really land; for some youths had tried to disembark upon it, but, just as they were about to set foot ashore, it disappeared beneath the waves. The next day it reappeared and the same thing was repeated. Finally, on the third day, one of the young men shot a red-hot arrow into it; this seems to have stabilized it, for the island did not disappear again and ultimately proved to be habitable. From this Giraldus argued that as fire is the most noble of the elements no phantasm can withstand its power. _INFLUENCES OF GEOGRAPHICAL ENVIRONMENT_ ON PLANT AND ANIMAL LIFE