CREATION BY EVOLUTION 



continents and continental islands — the sandstones, lime- 

 stones, shales and slates, and the coarsely crystalline rocks, 

 such as granite — are not found on the oceanic islands, whose 

 history was radically different from that of the continents and 

 their islands. 



When we turn to the animals and plants that inhabit these 

 remote islands we immediately note their marked difference 

 from those of the continental islands. Oceanic islands have 

 no land mammals other than bats, which are carried for 

 great distances by storms, just as land birds are. On some 

 of these islands m.ice are found, but these may have been 

 introduced by men. Amphibians (that is, frogs, toads, 

 newts, salamanders, and the like) are lacking, because not 

 only are these animals unable to endure sea water, but sea 

 water is fatal also to their eggs. Such islands have no true 

 fresh-water fishes, crustaceans, or mussels. The fresh-water 

 fishes and mussels that they do contain are those which read- 

 ily enter streams from the ocean and so are much the same 

 everywhere. The animals that are found in these remote 

 islands are land birds, lizards, snails, and insects — such crea- 

 tures, in short, as may reach them more or less accidentally, 

 as it were, being carried by wind or floated on driftwood for 

 long distances by ocean currents. Their plants also are of 

 the kinds whose seeds are carried by wind and wave. 



These oceanic islands may have received their plants and 

 animals in one of two ways. The doctrine of special crea- 

 tion maintains that these plants and animals were directly 

 created where we now find them. If we hold that they were 

 specially created on each island we should expect to find on 

 each island such forms as were particularly adapted to live 

 on it, to which, in short, the environment was suitable and 

 favourable. But this is not at all the case. Many of these 

 oceanic islands are large and could support rather large ani- 



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