6 34 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Its scientific name might mislead one, for its 

 head is just as much crested as its aquatic 

 brother's. The only differences between 

 them, apparent at first sight, are these : The 

 terrestrial animal is somewhat stouter, his 

 nose is longer, his eye brighter, his tail less 

 flattened and less crested, and his color is a 

 dusky orange, deepening into brown on the 

 hind-quarters. His habits of life are very 

 different, as he does not go near the sea, 

 but lives upon land-plants, and makes a bur- 

 row for himself in the sand and among the 

 fragments of lava. He spreads his hind-legs 

 flat on the ground, raises his chest to the 

 height of his fore-legs, and then nods and 

 winks at you in a very odd way. It looked 

 to me very much like swallowing, and I 

 thought it possible that the creature, with 

 his head in that position, swallowed air like 

 a toad, as a means of breathing swallowing 

 into the lungs, not into the stomach. 



One of our most interesting adventures 

 was landing in a little bay full of seals, so 

 tame, or rather so little afraid of men, that 

 we could tramp past groups of sleepers on 

 the beach without awakening half of them, 

 and without apparently frightening half of 

 those that we did awake. They seemed to 

 be fond of crawling under bushes just above 

 high-water mark, and sleeping, two or three 

 in a place, huddled close together. Under 

 one bush lay a mother and her two cubs, so 

 fearless that one of our officers held a piece 

 of cracker to the old one, and she smelled 

 it in his fingers as fearlessly as if she had 

 been a pet dog. The cubs quarrelled with 

 each other as to which should cuddle near- 

 est the mother, and they all three snarled 

 and snapped at the flies in the manner of 

 a sleepy dog, and all this while a party of 

 ladies and gentlemen, creatures as large as 

 the seals, and which the seals could scarce 

 have seen before, stood looking on within 

 touching distance. These seals had much 

 more length of arm, and used their arms 

 more in the manner of a quadruped, than I 

 had supposed any seal could do. I saw 

 them walk on the beach with the whole chest 

 clear of the ground, and even jump upon 

 the sand. Their favorite gymnastic exer- 

 cise, however, was to lie upon their backs 

 and roll, in the mauner of a horse. The 

 tameness of these seals and of many of the 

 land-birds was very surprising ; the Blunt- 

 ncses were more shy than we had expected. 

 I repeatedly put my fingers within half an 

 inch of little yellow-birds and phoebes, and 

 within six inches of mocking-birds. On 

 James Island the birds were so numer- 

 ous and so tame that, while I was trying the 

 experiment whether whistling to a yellow- 

 bird would divert his attention so much as 

 to make him allow me to touch him, six 

 other birds including two mocking-birds 

 came up and alighted on twigs within two 

 yards of the yellow-bird to see what was 



going on between us. As for the flies, their 

 tameness and pertinacity of adhesion, at the 

 Galapagos, goes far beyond all travellers' 

 accounts. I knew a good house-keeper In 

 New England who affirmed that house-flies 

 could not be driven out of a room unless 

 you struck and killed one or two, in order 

 to show the others that you were in earnest. 

 You cannot drive the Galapagos flies from 

 you even with that expedient. The birds 

 and seals are not frightened by being stoned 

 or shot ; they don't know what stones and 

 guns mean, and the flies are not frightened 

 or discouraged by having any amount of 

 their comrades killed. When a boat was 

 coming off-shore, the usual occupation, in 

 order to prevent carrying the nuisances on 

 ship, was for everybody to be picking the 

 flies off themselves (almost as they would 

 burrs), killing them, and throwing them into 

 the water, from the time of leaving the beach 

 to the arrival on the deck of the ship ; aud 

 the last fly slaughtered before you go into 

 the cabin is no more afraid of you than the 

 first one you slew at the beach. They are 

 not all biting flies ; we have escaped trouble 

 from mosquitoes and biting flies during the 

 whole voyage, but they are crawling, tic- 

 kling, adhesive, tantalizing creatures. It was 

 pleasant to find here at the Galapagos a 

 species of penguin, smaller and more sober 

 in dress than our old friends of the Straits of 

 Magellan, but with the same winning, cun- 

 ning manners that made the birds in the 

 Straits such favorites with our party. And, 

 while speaking of the birds of these islands, 

 I would not forget the splendid flamingoes, 

 six feet high, of which we got many fine 

 specimens. They sailed about in parties of 

 12 or 20 birds together, making long lines 

 of scarlet flame floating through the air. 

 We tried their flesh on the table, and found 

 it the most delicious game, fully equal to 

 the canvas-back, as it seemed to us. The 

 archipelago offers at present a fine oppor- 

 tunity for a naturalist, who desires to make 

 a residence here for several years, and thor- 

 oughly explore their structure, and their 

 productions, to throw a strong light upon 

 the great modern question of the origin of 

 species, and the doctrines of evolution. 

 Younger than Juan Fernandez, purely vol- 

 canic, bringing no seeds with them from the 

 bottom of the sea, not having had time to 

 alter and. amend species introduced from 

 the main-land, how did these islands come 

 in possession of their peculiarly-organized 

 beings their Bluntnoses, for example? 

 This was the question constantly recurring 

 to me during my visit to the Galapagos, as 

 it had been at Juan Fernandez. Prof. Agas- 

 siz gave us a little talk one day on our way 

 to Panama, and discussed the same point. 

 Expressing his warm admiration for Darwin's 

 moral and intellectual character, and earlier 

 scientific labors, he said that he considered 



