FERNANDO DE N'ORONHA, fer-nan'elo di no-ron'ya, an island of volcanic origin, in the South Atlantic, lat. 3° 50' S., long. 32° 25' W., about 225 miles east-northeast of Cape Saint Roque, belonging to Brazil ; area, about 12 square miles. It has a rugged, mountainous, wooded surface and is used as a penal settle ment for Brazilian male criminals. Its popula tion is about 2,000, of which some three-fourths are convicts who cultivate the fairly produc tive soil. It is reached by steamer from Per nambuco and was named after the Portuguese Count de Noronha who discovered it and the few smaller islands nearby in 1503. Due to location outside of the regular roads of travel, little was known of this island for many years after its discovery. Darwin stopped there for a few hours on his famous trip around the world. The Challenger expedition made a landing in 1873, but was not permitted to make any extensive explorations and not until 1876 when the Imperial Geological Survey of Brazil paid an official visit, did facts concerning its geology, fauna, etc., become generally known.
Consult Anon., 'A Brazilian Convict Island' (in Chambers' Journal, Vol. LXX, p. 116, London 1893) ; Branner, J. C., 'Notes on the Fauna of the Islands of Fernando de Noronha' (in American Naturalist, Vol. XXII, p. 861, 1888) Branner, J. C., and Williams, G. H., 'Geology of Fernando Noronha' (in American Journal of Science, Vol. CXXXVII, pp. 145 and 178, New Haven 1889) ; Pereira da Costa, F. A., 'A Ihla de Fernando de Noronha, etc.' (Pernambuco 1:•:7) ; Rattray, A., 'A Visit to Fernando No ronha' (in Royal Geographical Society Journal, Vol. XLII, p. 431, London 1872) '• 'Thomson, Sir C. W., 'The Voyage of the Challenger) (2' vols., New York 1878; 40 vols., Edinburgh 1880-95):