286 GALAPAGOS ARCHIPELAGO. (CHAP. xvn. 



of mundane distribution. With the exception of a wood-feeding Apate, 

 and of one or probably two water-beetles from the American continent, 

 all the species appear to be new. 



The botany of this group is fully as interesting as the zoology. 

 Dr. J. Hooker will soon publish in the " Linnean Transactions " a full 

 account of the Flora, and I am much indebted to him for the following 

 details. Of flowering plants there are, as far as at present is known, 

 185 species, and 40 cryptogamic species, making together 225; of this 

 number I was fortunate enough to bring home 193. Of the flowering 

 plants, 100 are new species, and are probably confined to this archi- 

 pelago. Dr. Hooker conceives that, of the plants not so confined, at 

 least 10 species found near the cultivated ground at Charles Island, 

 have been imported. It is, I think, surprising that more American 

 species have not been introduced naturally, considering that the dis- 

 tance is only between 500 and 600 miles from the continent ; and thatt 

 (according to Collnett, p. 58) drift-wood, bamboos, canes, and the 

 nuts of a palm, are often washed on the south-eastern shores. The 

 proportion of 100 flowering plants out of 185 (or 175 excluding the 

 imported weeds) being new, is sufficient, I conceive, to make the 

 Galapagos Archipelago a distinct botanical province; but this Flora 

 is not nearly so peculiar as that of St. Helena, nor, as I am informed 

 by Dr. Hooker, of Juan Fernandez. The peculiarity of the Galapageian 

 Flora is best shown in certain families; thus there are 21 species of 

 Composite, of which 20 are peculiar to this archipelago ; these 

 belong to twelve genera, and of these genera no less than ten are 

 confined to the archipelago 1 Dr. Hooker informs me that the Flora has 

 an undoubted Western American character ; nor can he detect in it any 

 affinity with that of the Pacific. If, therefore, we except the eighteen 

 marine, the one fresh-water, and one land-shell, which have apparently 

 come here as colonists from the central islands of the Pacific, and like- 

 wise the one distinct Pacific species of the Galapageian groups of 

 finches, we see that this archipelago, though standing in the Pacific 

 Ocean, is zoologically part of America. 



If this character were owing merely to immigrants from America, 

 there would be little remarkable in it ; but we see that a vast majority 

 of all the land animals, and that more than half of the flowering plants, 

 are aboriginal productions. It was most striking to be surrounded by 

 new birds, new reptiles, new shells, new insects, new plants, and yet 

 by innumerable trifling details of structure, and even by the tones of 

 voice and plumage of the birds, to have the temperate plains of 

 Patagonia, or the hot dry deserts of Northern Chile, vividly brought 

 before my eyes. Why, on these small points of land, which within a 

 late geological period must have been covered by the ocean, which are 

 formed of basaltic lava, and therefore differ in geological character from 

 the American continent, and which are placed under a peculiar climate, 

 why were their aboriginal inhabitants, associated, I may add, in 

 different proportions both in kind and number from those on the 

 continent, and therefore acting on each other in a different manner 

 why were they created on American types of organization? It is 



