MV ISLANDS. 13 



fronninatin.L,' abnnflantly, gave ri=;e to a whole valleyful 

 of appropriate plants foi- bullfinchos to feed upon. Now, 

 however, there was no bullfinch to eat them. For a long 

 time, indeed, no other bullfinches arrived at iny 

 (irchipelago. Once, to be sure, a few hundred years 

 later, .1 single cock bird did reach the island alone, much 

 txhansted with his journey, and managed to pick up a 

 living for himself off the seeds introduced by his unhappy 

 predecessor. But as he had no mate, he died at last, as 

 your lawyers would say, without issue. 



It was a couple of hundred years or so more before I 

 «aw a third bullfinch — which didn't surprise me, for 

 bullfinches are very woodland birds, and non-migratory 

 into the bargain — so that they didn't often get blown 

 seaward over the broad Atlantic. At the end of that 

 time, however, I observed one moi'ning a pair of finches, 

 after a heavy storm, drying their poor battered wings 

 upon a shrub in one of tlie islands. From this solitary 

 pair a new race sprang up, wliich developed after a time, 

 as I imagined they must, into a distinct species. These 

 local bullfinches now form the only birds peculiar to the 

 islands ; and the reason is one well divined by one of 

 your own great naturalists (to whom T mean before I 

 end to make the amende honorahle). In almost all other 

 cases the birds kept getting reinforced from time to time 

 by others of their kind blown out to sea accidentally — 

 for only such species were likely to arrive there — and 

 this kept up the purity of the original race, by ensuring 

 a cross every now and again with the European com- 

 munity. But the bullfinches, being the merest casuals, 

 never again to my knowledge w'ere reinforced from the 



