§ 47. THE ANCIENT WORLD. 



893 



sess a flora equally peculiar and extraordinary, and a fauna 

 unlike that of any other part of the world, including some 

 of the most anomalous of existing forms, as for example, 

 that marvellous creature the Ornithorhyncus. These coun- 

 tries, in the abundance and variety of the Cycadeaceaa, 

 Araucarias, &c — in the marsupial character of the great 

 proportion of the mammalia, — and in the terebratulae and 

 trigoniae, and the cestraciont fishes, which swarm in the seas 

 that wash their shores, approximate in their organic rela- 

 tions more nearly to those ancient lands, of which the 

 Stonesfield oolites are the debris (ante, p. 512), than to any 

 of the present regions of the earth. And lastly, we have 

 a reflected image, as it were, of the Age of Reptiles of the 

 Secondary periods, in the exclusively reptilian character 

 of the quadrupeds of the Galapagos Islands ; one species 

 of mouse being the only indigenous mammalian.* 



" This Archipelago," observes Mr. Darwin, " is a little 

 world within itself : most of the organic productions are 

 aboriginal creations, found nowhere else. Seeing every 

 height crowned with its crater, and the boundaries of most 

 of the lava-streams still distinct, we are led to believe that 

 w T ithin a period, geologically recent, the unbroken ocean 

 was here spread out. Hence, both in time and space, we 

 seem to be brought somewhat near to that great fact — that 

 mystery of mysteries — the first appearance of new beings 

 on this earth." 



These Islands swarm with herbivorous marine reptiles, 

 allied to the Iguanidse, which are known in no other part 



in after ages, will unravel the complicated changes that belong to the 

 successive periods into which the history of the creation of the whole 

 earth may be divided." 



* The Galapagos Archipelago is a group of volcanic islands situated 

 under the Equator, and between five and six hundred miles westward 

 of the American coast. See Mr. Darwin's Journal of a Voyage round 

 the World, chap. xvii. 



