392 GALAPAGOS ARCHIPELAGO. [car. xvIL 
mundane forms. As before remarked, the insects, for a tropical 
region, are of very small size and dull colours. Of beetles I col- 
lected twenty-five species (excluding a Dermestes and Corynetes 
imported, wherever a ship touches) ; of these, two belong to the 
Harpalidee, two to the Hydrophilide, nine to three families of the 
Heteromera, and the remaining twelve to as many different fami- 
lies. This circumstance of insects (and I may add plants), where 
few in number, belonging to many different families, is, I believe, 
very general. Mr. Waterhouse, who has published * an account 
of the insects of this archipelago, and to whom I am indebted 
for the above details, informs me that there are several new 
genera; and that of the genera not new, one or two are 
American, and the rest of mundane distribution. With the 
exception of a wood-feeding Apate, and of one or probably two 
water-beetles from the American continent, all the species appear 
to be new. 
The botany of this group is fully as interesting as the zoology. 
Dr. J. Hooker will soon publish in the ‘ Linnean Transactions ’ 
a full account of the Flora, and I am much indebted to him for 
the following details... Of flowering plants there are, as far as at 
present is known, 185 species, and 40 cryptogamic species, mak- 
ing together 225; of this number I was fortunate enough to bring 
home 193. Of the flowering plants, 100 are new species, and 
are probably confined to this archipelago. Dr. Hooker conceives 
that, of the plants not so confined, at least 10 species found near 
the cultivated ground at Charles Island, have been imported. 
It is, I think, surprising that more American species have 
not been introduced naturally, considering that the distance is 
only between 500 and 600 miles from the continent; and that 
(according to Collnett, p. 58) drift-wood, bamboos, canes, and the 
nuts of a palm, are often washed on the south-eastern shores. 
The proportion of 100 flowering plants out of 185 (or 175 ex- 
cluding the imported weeds) being new, is sufficient, I conceive, 
to make the Galapagos Archipelago a distinct botanical province ; 
but this Flora is not nearly so peculiar as that of St. Helena, nor, 
as I am informed by Dr. Hooker, of Juan Fernandez. The pe- 
culiarity of the Galapageian Flora is best shown in certain fami- 
* Ann. and Mag. of Nat. Hist., vol. xvi. p. 19. 
