132 ROMANES ON DISTRIBUTION. [CH. Ill 



introduced mammalia; and yet these islands are totally 

 without any indigenous mammalian population. Many 

 of the forest regions of Africa and Asia enjoy a climate 

 and temperature like that of the forests of South America, 

 and yet we do not find them tenanted by an identical 

 fauna. A locality which is in every way entirely suitable 

 to the life of a particular animal or plant is by no means 

 necessarily inhabited by that particular organism. This 

 of course is not an argument that is necessarily fatal to 

 the doctrine of creation. But it is at least more intelligible 

 on the theory of evolution. As the late Mr Romanes 

 pointed out 1 we can better understand that the 400 or so 

 species of humming-birds are limited to the warmer parts 

 of America because they came into existence in that 

 continent, and are too feeble in organisation to traverse 

 the intervening seas which separate them from equally 

 suitable countries and localities. There is no explanation 

 except that all these 400 were ultimately derived from 

 some American parent stock; otherwise why should the 

 400 if betokening so many distinct acts of creation have 

 been all of them placed in the same region of the world ? 

 Moreover we are met with the fact that tropical regions 

 of the old world with abundant flowers are tenanted by 

 birds which in some degree resemble the humming-birds 

 and lead the same sort of life. These again are limited 

 to those regions and are not found in America. On the 

 doctrine of special creation it is hard to understand why 

 there should not have been some admixture. 



On the other hand if we accept the theory of descent 

 1 Darwin, before and after. Vol. I., The Darwinian Theory. 



