THE GALAPAGOS TORTOISES. 263 
names and the prospect is that they will ultimately prevail. The Archipelago - 
was surveyed by Colnett, 1793. The chart, Plate 1, with the positions of the 
islands, directions of the currents, and the two series of names is sketched from 
that published under the direction of the Secretary of the Navy by the United 
States Hydrographic Office, 1915. From the directions of the currents it will 
be seen that affinities with South American organisms would be of the most 
natural imaginable, if dependence for origins of the flora and the fauna were 
placed upon the marine drift. The Spanish names of the islands with their 
English equivalents are as follows: — 
San Cristobal (Chatham). 
Espanola (Hood). 
Santa Maria (Floreana) (Charles). 
Santa Fé (Barrington). 
Santa Cruz (Chaves) (Indefatigable) (Porter’s). 
Tortuga (Brattle). 
Pinzon (Duncan). 
Isabela (Albemarle). 
Fernandina (Narborough). 
Rabida (Jervis). 
San Salvador (James). 
Marchena (Bindloe). 
Pinta (Abingdon). 
In what ever way the balance of the fauna reached the islands, immediate 
concern here is with the tortoises, and there is a possibility that they may have 
been introduced by men. No one would care to assert that they developed from 
birds or even from marine chelonians. There appears to be a sort of general 
agreement that they reached the Archipelago as tortoises not very different from 
what they now are. There is no evidence as yet, in the way of fossils, that they 
established themselves in the Tertiary or other formations earlier than the most 
recent. Their affinities are so close to living species on the mainland there is 
hardly room for doubt their ancestors were the same if indeed a species of the 
continent was not the direct progenitor brought, possibly, in the times of the 
Incas or still earlier by the aborigines. Because of the heavy and solid structure, 
one would not risk the suggestion that the Jaboty had drifted across the sea; 
but there is greater likelihood that island forms may have been drifted from one 
island to another after finding lodgment in the Archipelago. Whether it was 
