CREATION BY EVOLUTION 



been carried to them by winds and currents. If this is true, 

 the nature of the plants and animals of such an island must 

 be determined by the antiquity of the island, its remoteness 

 from land, and its position with reference to strong winds 

 and marine currents. But even if these plants and animals 

 reached the islands in the accidental manner described, 

 might they not have remained unchanged and immutable? 

 In that case there should be no particular relation between 

 the remoteness of the islands and their geological date of 

 formation, on the one hand, and the kind of creatures that 

 inhabit them, on the other. But if species are mutable and 

 subject to modification, then we ought to find that the isl- 

 ands had species that are peculiar to them, yet that would 

 show more or less distinct relationship to those of the main- 

 land from which the islands received the ancestors of their 

 peculiar species. That this is the true solution of the prob- 

 lem is strongly indicated by the plants and animals of the 

 Galapagos Islands, which first led Darwin to form his new 

 views on the origin of species. 



The Galapagos Archipelago is a group of five relatively 

 large and ten small islands, all of volcanic origin, which rise 

 steeply from great depths of the ocean. The one nearest to 

 the coast of Ecuador is about 600 miles distant from it, and 

 the islands lie almost on the Equator, in the zone of calms, 

 in which strong winds seldom blow. The arrival of a new 

 form from the mainland must be a very rare event; yet the 

 islands contain many birds, reptiles, and insects, but no mam- 

 mals. It is fortunate for our inquiry that no aborigines set- 

 tled in the islands, which, when Darwin first visited them, 

 were almost in a state of nature. Nearly all the animals and 

 plants that inhabit the islands are peculiar to them; the spe- 

 cies and many of the genera are found nowhere else in the 

 world. This statement does not, of course, apply to the sea 



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