282 bulletin: museum of comparative zoology. 



and flora are therefore to be regarded as having reaehed them in the 

 normal mode, viz., by migration on land. According to Mr. Beddard 

 ... it is difficult to see how earthworms could be transported across the 

 sea. Floating tree-trunks have been observed far out at sea, but unless 

 the water remained absolutely calm during the long period necessary for 

 the drifting by currents, so that no splashing occurred, the worms would 

 probably be killed. Yet earthworms do occur on oceanic islands. It is 

 indeed quite possible that our views with regard to the origin of the 

 remainder of the Pacific Islands may change very materially, and once 

 more revert to what Dr. Gould expressed nearly fifty years ago in the 

 following words : ' From a consideration of the land-shells on the Pacific 

 Islands, it seems possible to draw some fair inferences as to the relations 

 of the lands which once occupied the area of the Pacific Ocean, and 

 whose mountain peaks evidently now indicate or constitute the islands 

 with which it is now studded.' Indeed Dr. von Iheriug goes so far 

 as to positively state that in his opinion the Polynesian Islands are not 

 volcanic eruptions of the sea floor, which being without life were succes- 

 sively peopled from Australia and the neighboring islands, but the re- 

 mains of a great Pacific continent, which was in early mesozoic times 

 connected with other continental land masses. . . ." 



Scharff continues (p. 21): "Amphibians are affected in the same 

 manner by sea-water as slugs are. The accidental transportal of an 

 amphibian from the mainland to an island is therefore almost inconceiv- 

 able. And the presence of frogs, toads, and newts in the British Islands, 

 in Corsica and Sardinia, indicates, if nothing else did, that all these 

 islands were at no distant date united with the continent of Europe." 



All these remarks and quotations tend to show that the belief held by 

 the writer is not an unusual one, for certainly the fauna of the Greater 

 Antilles possess vastly more species than do either of the islands previ- 

 ously mentioned, which are among those now generally conceded to be 

 forms which will not survive transportal by the theory of flotsam and 

 jetsam which was so strongly urged by both Darwin and Wallace. And 

 without criticising the unassailable positions which both these men hold 

 as founders of the science of zoogeography, we must agree with Scharff 

 and other more modern students that their theories regarding the origin 

 of the faunae of islands require revision in the light of new data which 

 have come to hand from recent explorations. 



Regarding the continental aspect of the faunae of various West Indian 

 islands, one type remains to be mentioned which from its peculiar char- 

 acteristics renders quite inconceivable its being carried about on floating 



