194 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



thickly coated with feathers, inhabit in preference chilly climates, arc- 

 tic or else antarctic. The dreary summits of the Peruvian Andes are, 

 however, inhabited by a peculiar species of goose ; and another pecu- 

 liar species occurs in the Hawaiian Islands, upon Mauna Roa, — only 

 upon this one mountain, keeping amid or just above the zone of clouds, 

 at the elevation of 6500 to 7000 feet, but visiting the country below, a 

 small flock being often met with around the great crater. There are 

 probably not more than three or four hundred pairs of this bird in 

 existence ; nor, perhaps, have there ever been at any one time ; but 

 commercial demand, should it ever arise, might in a few years multiply 

 the pairs into millions, scattered all over the globe. 



" 3. The ocean-island of St. Helena is quite small, and its whole 

 outer and lower portion is desert. On the very summit, comprising 

 only five or six square miles of surface, some remarkable species of 

 plants are grooving, not to be found elsewhere. There seems no escape 

 from the conclusion, that within this limited space on St. Helena the 

 creative act has been exercised. 



" This exercise of creative power took place many thousand years 

 ago, as can be determined approximately. The coral-islands in the 

 Pacific are many of them as widely insulated as St. Helena, and of 

 larger area ; but coming out of the water after the existing species of 

 animals and plants had been created, too late for the visit of creative 

 power, they contain no additional species. This, at least, is certain in 

 resrard to the low coral-islands : and as to the two or three minute 

 land shells on the elevated coral-island of Metia, while so many rocky 

 islands widely scattered around remain unexplored, it will not be safe 

 to draw conclusions. 



" That species continue unchanged in aspect during thousands of 

 years, there is abundant evidence ; — in the imbedded shells of these 

 same coral-islands, for many ages above the waves, yet exactly similar 

 to wave-washed living species close at hand ; — in the animals and 

 plants figured fifty-five hundred years ago on Egyptian monuments, in 

 every instance identical with living species ; — in the bodies of a vari- 

 ety of animals mummified in Egypt during the last three thousand 

 years ; — and in Gliddon's mummy of a man who lived in the days of 

 the prophet Elijah, showing that that generation did not differ physi- 

 cally from ourselves." 



The special subject for the evening's discussion, namely, 

 the Classification of the Animal Kingdom, as exhibited in the 



