CHAPTER XI 
THE WEST INDIAN ISLANDS 
North and South America are to be regarded, according 
to Professor Suess,* as two essentially distinct land-masses, 
between which is interposed, as a third element, the area of 
Central America and the Antilles. This geological distinct¬ 
ness of Central America and the Antilles from the two neigh¬ 
bouring continents is scarcely recognisable in the fauna of the 
great isthmus. But the West Indies are comparable to a 
wedge driven in between two faunistically, more or less, in¬ 
dependent and distinct land masses. Almost everyone who 
has dealt with the fauna or flora of the West Indian islands 
has expressed his surprise at this fact. In position, says Dr. 
Wallace,f the Antilles form an unbroken chain uniting North 
and South America, in a line parallel to the great Central 
American isthmus. Yet instead of exhibiting an intermixture 
of the productions of Florida and Venezuela, they differ 
widely from both these countries, possessing in some groups 
a degree of speciality only to be found elsewhere in islands far 
removed from any continent. 
One other important feature which strikes the visitor to 
the islands is their extreme poverty in the higher groups of 
animal life. It is not that the Antilles are climatically un¬ 
favourable to animal life. On the contrary, they are excep¬ 
tionally favoured by nature to support a luxuriant and varied 
fauna and flora. Their temperature is high and uniform, 
there is an abundance of moisture, the soils are very fertile, 
while high mountains as well as gentle plains abound, at least 
in the larger islands. Cuba, the largest of them, exceeding 
Ireland in size, and being far more favourably situated, has 
# Suess, E., “ Antlitz der Erde,” I., p. 700. 
t Wallace, A. R., “Distribution of Animals,” II., p. 61. 
