6 INTRODUCTION. 
It was not, however, till the spring of 1865 that I was able to carry out this project. 
The careful researches of Wollaston and others had brought to light many interesting 
forms from Madeira, the Canaries, and Cape Verde Islands; but the Azores had been 
very imperfectly explored, and it was with the idea of giving a more satisfactory 
account of the natural history of these islands, and to trace their relationship to the 
neighbouring Archipelagos, that I decided to investigate their fauna. Oranges from 
St. Michael’s then formed almost the only trade with England, and in connection with 
the business large numbers of schooners were employed, but with this exception 
there was no regular, direct communication with England. <A small steamer, which 
carried the mails, left Lisbon once a month for the two nearest groups of islands, but 
rarely visited the two outer ones. Accompanied by my brother, Captain Temple 
Godman, I took a passage in this vessel, and shortly after our arrival at St. Michael’s 
we were joined by Mr. Brewer, a well known coleopterist whom I had engaged for the 
purpose of collecting. Interest in island faunas had been much stimulated by the 
publication of Darwin’s “ Geology of the Voyage of the ‘ Beagle’” and other works on 
the subject. The question was whether the Azores had in former times formed part 
of a continent now submerged, as Professor Edward Forbes believed, or whether they 
had been thrown up from the sea bottom by volcanic agency. After spending four 
months on the islands, during which time I visited all except Santa Maria, I came to 
the conclusion that they had always been volcanic islands, and that they derived their 
fauna and flora from neighbouring lands. In 1870 I published a small octavo book 
entitled ‘The Azores,’ enumerating the plants and animals as far as then known, and 
setting forth my reasons for the conclusion above stated. 
The visit to the Azores was followed in 1873 by an expedition to Madeira and the 
Canaries, in order to compare their respective faunas more critically, but unfortunately 
the regulations in respect to quarantine were then so stringent that, apart from Madeira, 
my investigations were limited to the island of Teneriffe. There can, I think, be no 
doubt that the conclusion I had already formed with regard to the Azores was fully 
borne out in these islands also. 
In the meantime, Salvin was residing at Rotherham, Yorkshire, looking after some 
ironworks in which he was financially interested; but this was not a congenial employ- 
ment, and he soon gave it up. 
In 1865 he married Caroline, daughter of J. Whitaker Maitland, of Loughton Hall 
in Essex, and they lived for some years at 23 The Boltons, South Kensington, which 
became for a time the headquarters of our Museum. 
Although both Salvin and I had jointly collected ever since our undergraduate days, it 
was not until the material was housed at 8. Kensington that we really did serious work 
together ; but from thence onwards we spent the greater part of the week in London 
arranging our collections, publishing papers on them, and attending the meetings of 
various scientific societies of which we were both members. 
