162 GALAPAGOS ARCHIPELAGO. 



table productions. As I at first observed, these 

 islands are not so remarkable for the number of 

 the species of reptiles as for that of the individu- 

 als; when we remember the well-beaten paths 

 made by the thousands of huge tortoises — the many 

 turtles — the great warrens of the terrestrial Am- 

 blyrhynchus — and the groups of the marine species 

 basking on the coast-rocks of every island, we 

 must admit that there is no other quarter of the 

 woi'ld where this Order replaces the herbivorous 

 mammalia in so extraordinary a manner. The ge- 

 ologist, on hearing this, will probably refer back in 

 his mind to the Secondary epochs, when lizards, 

 some herbivorous, some carnivorous, and of di- 

 mensions comparable only with our existing whales, 

 swarmed on the land and in the sea. It is, there- 

 fore, worthy of his obsei-vation, that this archipela- 

 go, instead of possessing a humid climate and rank 

 vegetation, cannot be considered otherwise than ex- 

 tremely arid, and, for an equatorial region, remark- 

 ably temperate. 



To finish with the zoology : the fifteen kinds of 

 sea-fish which I procured here are all new species; 

 they belong to twelve genera, all widely distribu- 

 ted, with the exception of Prionotus, of which the 

 four previously-known species live on the eastern 

 side of America. Of land-shells I collected sixteen 

 kinds (and two marked varieties), of which, with 

 the exception of one Helix found at Tahiti, all are 

 peculiar to this archipelago : a single fresh-water 

 shell (Paludina) is common to Tahiti and Van Die- 

 men's Land. Mr. Cuming, before our voyage, 

 procured here ninety species of sea-shells, and this 

 does not include several species not yet specifical- 

 ly examined, of Trochus, Turbo, Monodonta, and 

 Nassa. He has been kind enough to give me the 

 following interesting results : of the ninety shells, 



