224 ; THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 
to be far more easily distributed by winds than the seeds of 
flowering plants, and they are thus always ready to occupy 
any vacant places in suitable localities, and to compete with 
the less vigorous flowering plants. But where insects are so 
scarce, all plants which require insect fertilisation, whether 
constantly to enable them to produce seed at all or 
occasionally to keep up their constitutional vigour by crossing, 
must be at a great disadvantage; and thus the scanty flora 
which oceanic islands must always possess, peopled as they 
usually are by waifs and strays from other lands, is rendered 
still more scanty by the weeding out of all such as depend 
largely on insect fertilisation for their full development. It 
seems probable, therefore, that the preponderance of ferns in 
islands (considered in mass of individuals, rather than in 
number of species) is largely due to the absence of competing 
phenogamous plants; and that this is in great part due to 
the scarcity of insects. In other oceanic islands—such as 
New Zealand and the Galapagos, where ferns, although 
tolerably abundant, form no such predominant feature in the 
vegetation, but where the scarcity of flower-haunting insects 
is almost equally marked—we find a great preponderance of 
small, green, or otherwise inconspicuous flowers, indicating 
that only such plants have been enabled to flourish there as 
are independent of insect fertilisation. In the Galapagos— 
which are, perhaps, even more deficient in flying insects than 
Juan Fernandez—this is so striking a feature that Mr. Darwin 
speaks of the vegetation as consisting in great part of 
* wretched-looking weeds,” and states that “it was some 
time before he discovered that almost every plant was in 
flower at the time of his visit.” He also says that he “did 
not see one beautiful flower” in the islands. It appears, 
however, that Composite, Leguminose, Rubiacee, and 
Solanacee, form a large proportion of the flowering plants; 
and, as these are orders which usually require insect 
fertilisation, we must suppose either that they have become 
modified so as to be self-fertilised, or that they are fertilised 
by the visits of the minute Diptera and Hymenoptera, which 
are the only insects recorded from these islands. 
In Juan Fernandez, on the other hand, there is no such 
total deficiency of showy flowers. 1 am informed by Mr. 
Moseley that a variety of the magnoliaceous winter's bark 
