12 BULLETIN OF THE 
leading to different views from those based upon our present knowledge, 
it will be time to discuss the matter. When Dr. Baur says, “1t would 
appear that the whole west coast of America has undergone subsidence,” 
he is making a statement which is absolutely without foundation. On 
the contrary, all that we know of the geology of the west coast of 
Mexico, of Central America, and of South America, shows that their 
shores have been rising to a very great elevation as far south as the 
southern part of Chili. Dr. Baur need only refer to Darwin’s “ Geo- 
logical Researches,” and to the statements of the geologists who have 
examined the geology of Central America, to satisfy himself on that 
point. 
What has taken place north of the Gulf of California need not detain 
us. Why should not Cocos Island and Malpelo come within the same 
influences of subsidence? Some of the causes which Dr. Baur applies to 
the Galapagos to explain their present state have given the one its luxuri- 
ant vegetation, and have kept the other barren, and they are still plainly 
visible on the most cursory examination. The vegetation of the rainless 
belt along the coast of South America presents the same peculiarities 
and the same contrasts as that of the Galapagos and Cocos; given an 
absence of rain, and what can be more desolate than the region around 
Payta, the greater part of the coast of Peru, and northern Chili? Yet 
where do we find more brilliant verdure than along the river beds of the 
same region, or in districts which can be irrigated? Absence of rain and 
moisture in the equatorial regions apparently produces as great a dimi- 
nution in the size of the constituents of a flora as the excessive cold of 
an arctic climate or a high altitude. 
It seems far more natural to us to appeal, as we have done, to the 
agency of the trade winds and currents to account for the origin of the 
fauna and flora of these interesting islands. We are thus not called 
upon to accept a theory of extensive subsidence in an area where all the 
geological indications are those of elevation, especially when the proof of 
this subsidence is based on no better evidence than the so called alpine 
character of parts of its flora, and upon the presumed former connection 
of the Galapagos Islands with the Central American continent. The 
alpine features of the flora we have attempted to explain by its simi- 
larity to that of the adjoining rainless belt of South America, and we 
deny the existence of a former connection of these volcanic islands with 
the mainland, separated as they are now by a plain of nearly 2,000 
fathoms in depth. 
While slowly steaming through the archipelago from island to island, 
