THE KINSHIP OF LIFE. 



13 



Other species, very much like them in all respects, are 

 found, and these live along the coast of Peru. In the 

 Galapagos Islands, according to Darwin's notes, " there 

 are twenty-six land birds. Of these, twenty-one, or 

 perhaps twenty-three, are ranked as distinct species and 

 would commonly have been assumed to have been here 

 created, yet the close affinity of most of these birds to 

 American species is manifest in every character, in their 

 habits, gestures, and tones of voice. So it is with the 

 other animals and with a large proportion of the plants. 

 . . . The naturalist, looking at the inhabitants of these 

 volcanic islands in the Pacific, feels that he is standing 

 on American land." 



The question, then, is this : If these species have 

 been created as we find them on the Galapagos Islands, 

 why is it that they should all be very similar in type to 

 other animals living under wholly different conditions 

 but on a coast not so very far away ? And, again, why 

 are the animals and plants of another cluster of volcanic 

 islands — the Cape Verde Islands — similarly related to 

 those of the neighbouring coast of Africa and wholly un- 

 like those of the Galapagos ? If the animals were cre- 

 ated to match their conditions of life, then those of the 

 Galapagos should be like those of Cape Verde, the two 

 archipelagos being extremely alike in respect to soil, 

 climate, and physical surroundings. If the species on 

 the islands are products of separate acts of creation, 

 what is there in the nearness of the coasts of Africa or 

 Peru to influence the act of creation so as to cause 

 the island species to be, as it were, echoes of those on 

 shore ? 



If, on the other hand, we should adopt the obvious 

 conclusion that both of these clusters of islands have been 

 at one time or another colonized by emigrants from the 

 mainland, by the waifs of wind and storm, the fact of 



