THE KINSHIP OF LIFE. 13 
other species, very much like them in all respects, are 
found, and these live along the coast of Peru. In the 
Galapagos Islands, according to Darwin’s notes, “ there 
are twenty-six land birds. Of these, twenty-one, or 
perhaps twenty-three, are ranked as distinct species and 
would commonly have been assumed to have been here 
created, yet the close affinity of most of these birds to 
American species is manifest in every character, in their 
habits, gestures, and tones of voice. So it is with the 
other animals and with a large proportion of the plants. 
... The naturalist, looking at the inhabitants of these 
volcanic islands in the Pacific, feels that he is standing 
on American land.” 
The question, then, is this: If these species have 
been created as we find them on the Galapagos Islands, 
why is it that they should all be very similar in type to 
other animals living under wholly different conditions 
but on a coast not so very far away? And, again, why 
are the animals and plants of another cluster of volcanic 
islands—the Cape Verde Islands—similarly related to 
those of the neighbouring coast of Africa and wholly un- 
like those of the Galapagos? If the animals were cre- 
ated to match their conditions of life, then those of the 
Galapagos should be like those of Cape Verde, the two 
archipelagos being extremely alike in respect to soil, 
climate, and physical surroundings. If the species on 
the islands are products of separate acts of creation, 
what is there in the nearness of the coasts of Africa or 
Peru to influence the act of, creation so as to cause 
the island species to be, as it were, echoes of those on 
shore? 
If, on the other hand, we should adopt the obvious 
conclusion that both of these clusters of islands have been 
at one time or another colonized by emigrants from the 
mainland, by the waifs of wind and storm, the fact of 
