835.] DISTRIBUTION OF THE ORGANIC BEINGS. 398 



lies; — thus there are 21 species of Composites, of which 20 arc 

 peculiar to this archipelago ; these belong to twelve genera, and 

 of these genera no less than ten are confined to the archi- 

 pelago I 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 likewise the one distinct Pacific species of 

 the Galapageian group 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 Ame- 

 rica, 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 geolo- 

 gical 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 pe- 

 culiar 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 probable that the islands of the 

 Cape de Verd group resemble, in all their physical conditions, 

 far more closely the Galapagos Islands than these latter phy- 

 sically resemble the coast of America ; yet the aboriginal inha- 

 bitants of the two groups are totally unlike ; iiiose of the Cape de 

 Verd Islands bearing the impress of Africa, z.s the inhabitants of 

 the Galapagos Archipelago are stamped with that of America. 



I have not as yet noticed by far the most remarkable feature 

 in the natural history of this archipelago ; it is, that the different 



