1835.] BOTANY. 377 



is known, 185 species, and 40 cryptogamic species, making together 

 225 ; of this number I was fortunate enough to bring home 193. 

 Of the flowering plants, 100 are new species, and are probably 

 confined to this archipelago. Dr. Hooker conceives that, of the 

 plants not so confined, at least 10 species found near the cultivated 

 ground at Charles Island, have been imported. It is, I think, 

 surprising that more American species have not been introduced 

 naturally, considering that the distance is only between 500 and 

 600 miles from the continent ; and that (according to Collnet, p. 58) 

 drift-wood, bamboos, canes, and the nuts of a palm, are often 

 washed on the south-eastern shores. The proportion of 100 

 flowering plants out of 185 (or 175 excluding the imported weeds) 

 being new, is sufficient, I conceive, to make the Galapagos 

 Archipelago a distinct botanical province ; but this Flora is 

 not nearly so peculiar as that of St. Helena, nor, as I am informed 

 by Dr. Hooker, of Juan Fernandez. The peculiarity of the 

 Galapageian Flora is best shown in certain families ; thus there 

 are 21 species of Composite, of which 20 are peculiar to this 

 archipelago ; these belong to twelve genera, and of the&e genera 

 no less than ten are confined to the archipelago! 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 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 



