fo GALAPAGOS ARCHIPELAGO. [CHAP, xVn. 



1746. The water would then have deposited mud, containing frag- 

 ments of pottery from the kilns, more abundant at some spots than at 

 others, and shells from the sea. This bed with fossil earthenware, 

 stands at about the same height with the shells on the lower terrace 

 of San Lorenzo, in which the cotton-thread and other relics were 

 embedded. Hence we may safely conclude, that within the Indo- 

 human period there has been an elevation, as before alluded to, of 

 more than eighty-five feet ; for some little elevation must have been 

 lost by the coast having subsided since the old maps were engraved. 

 At Valparaiso, although in the 220 years before our visit, the elevation 

 cannot have exceeded nineteen feet, yet subsequently to 1817 there 

 has been a rise, partly insensible and partly by a start during the shock 

 of 1822, of ten or eleven feet. The antiquity of the Indo-human race 

 here, judging by the eighty-five feet rise of the land since the relics 

 were embedded, is the more remarkable, as on the coast of Patagonia, 

 when the land stood above the same number of feet lower, the 

 Macrauchenia was a living beast ; but as the Patagonian coast is some 

 way distant from the Cordillera, the rising there may have been slower 

 than here. At Bahia Blanca, the elevation has been only a few feet 

 since the numerous gigantic quadrupeds were there entombed; and 

 according to the generally received opinion, when these extinct animals 

 were living, man did not exist. But the rising of that part of the 

 coast of Patagonia, is perhaps noways connected with the Cordillera, 

 but rather with a line of old volcanic rocks in Banda Oriental, so that 

 it may have been infinitely slower than on the shores of Peru. All 

 these speculations, however, must be vague ; for who will pretend to 

 say, that there may not have been several periods of subsidence, 

 intercalated between the movements of elevation; for we know that 

 along the whole coast of Patagonia, there have certainly been many 

 and long pauses in the upward action of the elevatory forces. 



CHAPTER XVII. 



GALAPAGOS ARCHIPELAGO. 



The whole Group Volcanic Number of Craters Leafless Bushes Colony 

 at Charles Island James Island Salt-lake in Crater Natural History 

 of the Group Ornithology, Curious Finches Reptiles Great Tortoises, 

 Habits of Marine Lizard, feeds on Seaweed Terrestrial Lizard, 

 Burrowing Habits, Herbivorous Importance of Reptiles in the Archi- 

 pelago Fish, Shells, Insects Botany American Type of Organization 

 Differences in the Species or Races on Different Islands Tameness 

 of the Birds Fear of Man, an acquired Instinct. 



September it,th. THIS archipelago consists of ten principal islands, 

 of whichjfive exceed the others in size. They are situated under the 

 Equator, and between five and six hundred miles westward of the" 

 coast of America. They are all formed of volcanic rocks ; a few 



