CHAPTER XI 







THE WEST INDIAN ISLANDS 



NORTH and South America are to be regarded, according 

 to Professor Suess,* as two essentially distinct land-masses, 

 between which is interposed, as a third element, the area of 

 Central America and the Antilles. This geological distinct- 

 ness of Central America and the Antilles from the two neigh- 

 bouring continents is scarcely recognisable in the fauna of the 

 great isthmus. But the West Indies are comparable to a 

 wedge driven in between two faunistically, more or less, in- 

 dependent and distinct land masses. Almost everyone who 

 has dealt with the fauna or flora of the West Indian islands 

 has expressed his surprise at this fact. In position, says Dr. 

 Wallace, f the Antilles form an unbroken chain uniting North 

 and South America, in a line parallel to the great Central 

 American isthmus. Yet instead of exhibiting an intermixture 

 of the productions of Florida and Venezuela, they differ 

 widely from both these countries, possessing in some groups 

 a degree of speciality only to be found elsewhere in islands far 

 removed from any continent. 



One other important feature which strikes the visitor to 

 the islands is their extreme poverty in the higher groups of 

 animal life. It is not that the Antilles are climatically un- 

 favourable to animal life. On the contrary, they are excep- 

 tionally favoured by nature to support a luxuriant and varied 

 fauna :and flora. Their temperature is high and uniform, 

 there is an abundance of moisture, the soils are very fertile, 

 while high mountains as well as gentle plains abound, at least 

 in the larger islands. Cuba, the largest of them, exceeding 

 Ireland in size, and being far more favourably situated, has 



* Suess, E., " Antlitz der Erde," I., p. 700. 



f Wallace, A. K., "Distribution of Animals," II., p. 61. 



