MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 59 
mon on the coast of Panama and Guayaquil. In the upper regions of 
Charles the vegetation is more luxuriant, the open fields forming quite 
extensive undulating plains. 
The general appearance of the vegetation of Indefatigable is much the 
same in its general subdivisions as that of Chatham and Charles. 
As Andersson says,! with the exception of Australia and some of 
the islands of that faunal district, no land perhaps possesses so many 
characteristic plants as the Galapagos, as more than half of the plants 
thus far known are peculiar to the Galapagos, and of these only a very 
small portion are common to all or a majority of the islands. 
Part of the vegetation has come from the West Indies and Panama, 
or is allied to that of Southern California, of Mexico, of Southern Colom- 
bia, and of the high plains of the Western Andes, perhaps as far south 
even as Chili. No one has better than Hooker? given the probable 
course which was followed by the plants which have reached the Ga- 
lapagos from these different regions, and which in the course of cen- 
turies have become more or less modified, so as to bear but a distant 
resemblance to the plants now growing in the very regions from which 
they came. 
The course of the currents along the Mexican and the Central and 
South American coasts clearly indicate to us the sources from which the 
fauna and flora of the volcanic group of the Galapagos has derived its 
origin. The distance from the coast of Ecuador (Galera Point and Cape 
San Francisco) is in a direct line not much over 500 miles, and that from 
the Costa Rica coast but a little over 600 miles, and the bottom must 
be for its whole distance strewn thickly with vegetable matter, which, 
as I have already stated, came up in great masses in almost every haul 
of the trawl. This was especially noteworthy in the line from the main- 
land to Cocos Island, and certainly offers a very practical object lesson 
regarding the manner in which that island must have received its vege- 
table products. It is only about 275 miles from the mainland, and its 
flora, so similar to that of the adjacent coast, tells its own story. Mal- 
pelo, on the contrary, which is an inaccessible rock with vertical sides 
(Plate XIV., and destitute of any soil formed from the disintegration of 
the rocks, has remained comparatively barren, in spite of its closer 
proximity to the mainland. 
pleasant addition to our monotonous fare. The distance from the landing to the 
first improvements was about three miles, over what had been a good wagon 
road.”— Tanner’s Report. 
1 Linnea, XXXI., 1861-62, p. 595. 
? Hooker, J. D., Linn. Soc. Trans., 1851, Vol. XX. p. 163. 
