MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 71 
with what is known of their geological structure. He speaks of the 
Galapagos as being connected with the mainland by the 4,000 meter 
line. The ease with which such connections are made on a chart re- 
quires no serious discussion. Then he adds, “ This [the connection of 
the Galapagos with South America] is an important fact; all the older 
maps showed the Galapagos separated from Central America.” (!) 
The islands of Duncan and Gallego, which are said to have existed be- 
tween Clipperton and the Galapagos, he assumes to have disappeared. 
Their existence does not rest on any better basis than that of so many 
islands and shoals constantly reported by inexperienced or hasty naviga- 
tors. Take the Rivadeneyra Shoal, — on which the “ Albatross ” has 
paid out over 1,000 fathoms, — which has been twice reported of late 
years, and is either a rip or an effect of light. 
The connection of Vancouver and the Alaska Islands with the main- 
land, or that of the Santa Barbara Islands, Guadalupe, and other 
Californian islands, has nothing to do with the question of the former 
connection of the Galapagos with the South American continent. Each 
caso must be judged by itself. Baur also brings up the case of the Tres 
Marias, which consist of stratified rocks and are close to the Mexican 
coast, separated from it by a flat of not more than thirty fathoms, and 
speaks of them as on the same bank as Socorro and the Revilla Gigedo 
Islands. This seems to be taking a good deal of poetical license with our 
present knowledge, and especially to bring them up as an argument from 
analogy that the Galapagos have been a part of South America because 
they may have been and are within the 4,000 meter line. One would 
imagine from Dr. Baur’s argument that the islands of Felice and Juan 
Fernandez are closely connected with and due south of the Galapagos. 
Surely so much is known of the habits of the seals and of the albatross 
that we need not look upon their existence on the islands as proving any 
land connection between the southern points where they are known to 
breed, and the Galapagos, where they also have colonized. Dr. Baur 
also mentions the case of the Sandwich Islands as having originated by 
subsidence. No more unfortunate suggestion could have been made 
regarding their origin. All we know of their geology seems to show 
that the different islands have been gradually built up around a cen- 
tral nucleus by successive eruptions, much in the same way that the 
Galapagos were. It seems hardly worth while, on the basis of the 
assumption of Dr. Baur, to renew speculations on the theory of the per- 
manence of the Pacific Ocean basin. After Dr. Baur has completed his 
examination of the Galapagos, and has given us the additional soundings 
