84 THE BERMUDA ISLANDS. 



Eastern and Southern United States, Eumeces fasciatas. The 

 animal is said to be very common, but we saw and obtained 

 but a single specimen. Until within the last few years the 

 batrachians were wholly wanting from the Bermudas, or at 

 least supposed to be so. Latterly, specimens of the big Bufo 

 marinus were introduced, and seemingly the new toad does 

 well. We saw several of these animals in the brackish waters 

 near the Devonshire marshes. Not unlikely a species of 

 ccecilian also belongs to the Bermudian fauna, and may 

 indeed be indigenous. We obtained from under a stone a 

 number of eggs beaded to one another in the form of a string, 

 which I was unable to place. Prof. Ryder, of the Univer- 

 sity of Pennslyvania, has kindly examined these for me, and 

 he believes that they are the eggs of coecilians. They certainly 

 bear a very close resemblance to the figures and descriptions of 

 the ova of the Coecilia, and most so, perhaps, to those of the 

 genus Coecilia itself. It would be interesting to determine to 

 what animal the eggs really belonged. They measured about 

 5 mm. in diameter. 



The preceding enumeration of species brings prominently 

 to light three important points in zoogeography : 1. The im- 

 poverished character of the vertebrate fauna; 2, the distinc- 

 tively American, and more particularly, North American^ 

 aspect of this fauna ; and 3, the general absence of forms 

 peculiar to the islands. These conditions would seem to im- 

 ply a permanent (past) isolation of the islands from the near- 

 est mainland, and a comparatively brief existence. But this 

 need not necessarily have been the case. Even if we admit 

 a former connection with, or near approach to, the American 

 continent, for which, however, there appears to be but little, if 

 any, satisfactory evidence, we could scarcely hope, under the 

 conditions which have marked the history of the Bermudas, 

 to have retained many elements of a continental vertebrate 

 fauna. The restricted area and absence of freshwater, in con- 

 junction with the depredations of birds of prey, would have 

 soon exterminated, or all but exterminated, what there may 



