INHABITANT S Of OCEANIC ISLAND. 3SS 



fcon for insects. New Zealand, for instance, with its lofty 

 mountains and diversified stations, extending over 780 miles 

 of latitude, together with the outlying islands of Auckland, 

 Campbell, and Chatham, contain altogether only 960 kinds 

 of flowering plants ; if we compare this moderate number 

 with the species which swarm over equal areas in South- 

 western Australia or at the Cape of Good Hope, we must 

 admit that some cause, independently of different physical 

 conditions, has given rise to so great a difference in number. 

 Even the uniform county of Cambridge has 847 plants, and 

 the little island of Anglesea 764, but a few ferns and a few 

 introduced plants are included in these numbers, and the 

 comparison in some other respects is not quite fair. We 

 have evidence that the barren island of Ascension aborigi- 

 nally possessed less than half a dozen flowering plants ; yet 

 many species have now become naturalized on it, as they 

 have in New Zealand and on every other oceanic island 

 which can be named. In St. Helena there is reason to 

 believe that the naturalized plants and animals have nearly 

 or quite exterminated many native productions. He who 

 admits the doctrine of the creation of each separate species, 

 will have to admit that a sufficient number of the best- 

 adapted plants and animals were not created for oceanic 

 islands ; for man has unintentionally stocked them far more 

 fully and perfectly than did nature. 



Although in oceanic islands the species are few in number 

 the proportion of endemic kinds (L e., those found nowhere 

 else in the world) is often extremely large. If we compare, 

 for instance, the number of endemic land-shells in Madeira, 

 or of endemic birds in the Galapagos Archipelago, with the 

 number found on any continent, and then compare the area 

 of the island with that of the continent, we shall see that 

 this is true. This fact might have been theoretically 

 expected, for, as already explained, species occasionally arriv- 

 ing, after long intervals of time, in the new and isolated 

 district, and having to compete with new associates, would 

 be eminently liable to modification, and would often produce 

 groups of modified descendants. But it by no means fol- 

 lows that, because in an island nearly all the species of 

 one class are peculiar, those of another class, or of another 

 section of the same class, are peculiar ; and this difference 

 seems to depend partly on the species which are not modified 

 having immigrated in a body, so that their mutual relations 

 have not been much disturbed ; and partly on the frequent 



