Geographical Distribution. 239 
which many naturalists regard as merely local varie- 
ties. But, even as thus interpreted, how wonderful is 
the contrast between the 1000 islands of Great Britain 
and the single volcanic rock of St. Helena, where 
almost all the animals and about half the plants are 
peculiar, instead of about 5 of the animals, and ;4, of 
the plants. Of course, if no peculiar species of any 
kind had occurred in the British Isles, advocates of 
special creation might have argued that it was, so to 
speak, needless for the Divinity to have added any 
new species to those European forms which fully 
populated the islands at the time when they were 
separated from the continent. But, as the matter 
stands, advocates of special creation must face the 
fact that a certain small number of new and peculiar 
species have been formed on the British Isles; and, 
therefore, that creative activity has not been wholly 
suspended in their case. Why, then, has it been so 
meagre in this case of a thousand islands, when it has 
proved so profuse in the case of all single islands 
more remote from mainlands, and presenting a higher 
antiquity? Or why should the Divinity have thus 
appeared so uniformly to consult these merely acci- 
dental circumstances of space and time in the de- 
positing of his unique specific types? Do not such 
facts rather speak with irresistible force in favour of the 
view, that while all ancient and solitary islands have 
had time enough, and separation enough, to admit of 
distinct histories of evolution having been written in 
their living inhabitants, no one of the thousand islands 
of Great Britain has had either time enough, or separa- 
tion enough, to have admitted of more than some of the 
first pages of such a history having been commenced? 
