Geographical Distribution. 239 



which many naturalists regard as merely local varie- 

 ties. But, even as thus interpreted, how wonderful is 

 the contrast between the 1000 islands of Great Britain 

 and the single volcanic rock of St. Helena, where 

 almost all the animals and about half the plants are 

 peculiar, instead of about ^V of the animals, and -^ of 

 the plants. Of course, if no peculiar species of any 

 kind had occurred in the British Isles, advocates of 

 special creation might have argued that it was, so to 

 speak, needless for the Divinity to have added any 

 new species to those European forms which fully 

 populated the islands at the time when they were 

 separated from the continent. But. as the matter 

 stands, advocates of special creation must face the 

 fact that a certain small number of new and peculiar 

 species have been formed on the British Isles ; and, 

 therefore, that creative activity has not been wholly 

 suspended in their case. Why, then, has it been so 

 meagre in this case of a thousand islands, when it has 

 proved so profuse in the case of all single islands 

 more remote from mainlands, and presenting a higher 

 antiquity? Or why should the Divinity have thus 

 appeared so uniformly to consult these merely acci- 

 dental circumstances of space and time in the de- 

 positing of his unique specific types ? Do not such 

 facts rather speak with irresistible force in favour of the 

 view, that while all ancient and solitary islands have 

 had time enough, and separation enough, to admit of 

 distinct histories of evolution having been written in 

 their living inhabitants, no one of the thousand islands 

 of Great Britain has had either time enough, or separa- 

 tion enough, to have admitted of more than some of the 

 first pages of such a history having been commenced ? 



