3SS A REMARKABLE FEATURE. fcnAP. xvii. 



America, 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 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 difl'erent manner — why 

 were they created on American types of organisation ? 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 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 remarkable 

 feature in the natural hlstor}' of this archipelago ; It Is, that 

 the different islands to a considerable extent are Inhabited 

 by a different set of beings. My attention was first called 

 to this fact by the VIce-Governor, Mr. Lawson, declaring 

 that the tortoises differed from the different islands, and 

 that he could with certainty tell from which Island any one 

 was brought. I did not for some time pay sufficient 

 attention to this statement, and I had already partlall}' 

 mingled together the collections from two of the islands. 

 I never dreamed that Islands, about fifty or sixty miles 

 apart, and most of them in sight of each other, formed of 

 precisely the same rocks, placed under a quite, similar 

 climate, rising to a nearly equal height, would have been 

 differently tenanted ; but we shall soon see that this Is the 

 case. It Is the fate of most voyagers, no sooner to discover 

 what Is most interesting In any locality, than they are 



