350 ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 



size and varied stations of New Zealand, extending over 

 780 miles of latitude, and compare its flowering plants, 

 only 750 in number, with those on an equal area at 

 the Cape of Good Hope or in Australia, we must, I 

 think, admit that something quite independently of 

 any difference in physical conditions has caused 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 com- 

 parison in some other respects is not quite fair. We 

 have evidence that the barren island of Ascension ab- 

 originally possessed under half a dozen flowering plants ; 

 yet many have become naturalised on it, as they have 

 on New Zealand and on every other oceanic island 

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

 believe that the naturalised 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 have 

 not been created on oceanic islands ; for man has un- 

 intentionally stocked them from various sources far 

 more fully and perfectly than has nature. 



Although in oceanic islands the number of kinds 

 of inhabitants is scanty, the proportion of endemic 

 species (i.e. those found nowhere else in the world) is 

 often extremely large. If we compare, for instance, 

 the number of the endemic land-shells in Madeira, or 

 of the endemic birds in the Galapagos Archipelago, with 

 the number found on any continent, and then compare 

 the area of the islands with that of the continent, we 

 shall see that this is true. This fact might have been 

 expected on my theory, for, as already explained, 

 species occasionally arriving after long intervals in a new 

 and isolated district, and having to compete with new 

 associates, will be eminently liable to modification, and 

 will often produce groups of modified descendants. But 

 it by no means follows, that, because in an island nearly 

 all the species of one class are peculiar, those of another 



