ORIGIN OF PLANTS. 215 



might have taken place ; but what really c?ic? take place, ana 

 the true order in which the events occurred, it is the part of 

 the geologist to determine. It cannot be out of place to re- 

 mark, further, that geological discovery is in no degree re- 

 sponsible for the infidelity of the development hypothesis • 

 seeing that, in the first place, the hypothesis is greatly more 

 ancient than the discoveries, and, in the second, that its more 

 prominent assertors are exactly the men who know least of 

 geological fact. But to this special point I shall again refer. 

 The author of the " Vestiges" is at one, regarding the sup- 

 posed marine origin of terrestrial plants, with Maillet and 

 Oken ; and he regards the theory, we find him stating in his 

 " Explanations," as the true key to the well-established fact, 

 that the vegetation of groupes of islands generally corresponds 

 with that of the larger masses of land in their neighbourhood. 

 Marine plants of the same kinds crept out of the sea, it would 

 seem, upon the islands on the one hand, and upon the larger 

 masses of land on the other, and thus produced the same flora 

 in each ; just as tadpoles, after passing their transition state, 

 creep out of their canal or river on the opposite banks, and 

 thus give to the fields or meadows on the right-hand side a 

 supply of frogs, of the same appearance and size as those 

 poured out upon the fields and meadows of the left. " Thus, 

 for example," we find him saying, " the Galapagos exhibit 

 general characters in common with South America ; and the 

 Cape de Yerd Islands, with Africa. They are, in Mr Dar- 

 win's happy phrase, satellites to those continents, in respect 

 of natural history. Again," he continues, " when masses of 

 land are only divided from each other by narrow seas, there 

 is usually a community of forms. The European and African 

 shores of the Mediterranean present an example. Our own 

 islands afibrd another of far higher value. It appears that 

 ihe flora of Ireland and Great Britain is various, or rather 

 that we have five floras or distinct sets of plants, and that 



