222 CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES (Proc. 47H Ser. 
all dry at the times this island was visited by our party. With 
the exception of two small springs at Tagus Cove on Albe- 
marle Island, there are no springs of fresh water on any of the 
other islands, so far as was observed. On the southeast side 
of the mountain at Villamil on Albemarle Island, a short dis- 
tance below the top, there are indeed one or two small lakes, 
but the inhabitants of the settlement about half way up the side 
of the mountain, depend entirely on the rain for their water 
supply. Captain Thomas Levick, an Englishman who has 
lived on the islands for some thirty-five years, told us that there 
were small streams in the upper interior region of Indefati- 
gable Island, as well as a crater lake of considerable size, but 
we were not fortunate enough to get far enough into the 
interior of this island to find them. Both Duncan and Hood 
Islands have broad flat basins in their interiors which appear 
to have been recently filled with water. 
There is evidently enough precipitation on all of the higher 
islands to form springs if there were enough soil to hold it. 
But as the soil usually forms only a comparatively thin layer 
over the surface, practically all of the water that falls sinks 
very shortly into the cracks in the lava and comes out at various 
places along the shore. Some of these springs are large, and 
their water, as a rule, is quite brackish, owing to the fact that 
it consists partly of sea water that has percolated through the 
lava for a considerable distance inland. 
Seasons 
The rainy season, and with it the usual spring vegetation, 
usually come between January and June, and in 1906 were 
confined to the first three of these months on most of the 
islands. There is however no absolute certainty when spring 
will come, and it sometimes misses a year entirely. The time 
at which the rainy season arrives in a given year varies con- 
siderably on different islands. It sometimes commences at 
different times on adjacent islands, and even two sides of the 
same island may show a considerable amount of variation in 
this respect. In 1906 the spring season was at its height at 
Wreck Bay, on the south side of Chatham Island, in the month 
of January, while at Sappho Cove, on the north side of this 
island, it evidently began three weeks to a month later. Some- 
