16G GALAPAGOS ARCHIPELAGO. 



able in it; but we sec 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 different types of organization 1 

 It is probable that the islands of the Cape de Verd 

 group reseinble, in all their physical conditions, far 

 more closely the Galapagos Islands than these lat- 

 ter physically resemble the coast of America ; yet 

 the aboriginal inhabitants of the two groups are 

 totally unlike, those of the Cape de Verd Islands 

 bearing the impress of Africa, as the inhabitants of 

 the Galapagos Archipelago are stamped with that 

 of America. 



I have not as yet noticed by far the most remark- 

 able feature in the natural history of this archipel- 

 ago ; it is, that the different islands, to a considera- 

 ble extent, are inhabited by a different set of be- 

 ings. My attention was first called to this fact by 

 the vice-governor, Mr. Lawson, declaring that the 

 tortoises differed from the different islands, and 



