12 [316] 



DARWIN AND HUMBOLDT. 



A spirit such as this, penetrating 

 an intelligence such as Mr. Darwin's, 

 would not content itself with the 

 superficial interest of form and color. 

 These, in his eyes, were the outward 

 and visible signs of the inner secrets. 

 The fascination of sense which the 

 former imposed upon him but stimu- 

 lated his desire to unveil the latter. 

 In the Galapagos we are not then 

 surprised to find him ardently ab- 

 sorbed in the problems which the 

 extraordinary distribution of the 

 plants, no less than of other organ- 

 isms presented : — " I indiscriminately 

 collected," he says, ''everything in 

 flower on the different islands, and 

 fortunately kept my collections sep- 

 arate." 



After tabulating the results which 

 they yielded after systematic determ- 

 ination, he proceeds: 



"Hence we have the truly wonder- 

 ful fact, that in James Island, of the 

 thirty-eight Galapageian plants, or 

 those found in no other part of the 

 world, thirty are exclusively confined 

 to this one island ; and in Albemarle ' 



the geographical distribution of plants 

 stood after the publication of the 

 Origin of Species cannot then be 

 better estimated than from the 

 summary of the position, contained in 

 Sir Joseph Hooker's recent Address 

 to the Geographical Section of the 

 meeting of the British Association at 

 York. 



" Before the publication of the doc- 

 trine of the origin of species by varia- 

 tion and natural selection, all reasoning 

 on their distribution was in subordina- 

 tion to the idea that these were per- 

 manent and special creations ; just 

 as, before it was shown that species 

 were often older than the islands and 

 mountains they inhabited, naturalists 

 had to make their theories accord 

 with the idea that all migration took 

 place under existing conditions of 

 land and sea. Hitherto the modes of 

 dispersion of species, genera and fam- 

 ilies had been traced, but the origin 

 of representative species, genera, and 

 families, remained an enigma ; these 

 could be explained only by the sup- 

 position that the localites where they 



Island, of the twenty-six aboriginal occurred presented conditions so 

 Galapageian plants, twenty-two are j similar that they favored the crea- 

 confined to this one island, that is, i tion of similar organisms. But this 

 only four are known to grow on the failed #o account for representation 

 other islands ©f the Archipelago ; and occurring in the far more numer- 

 so on, as shown in the above table, ! ous cases where there is no dis- ' 

 with the plants from Chatham and coverable similarity of physical 

 Charles Island." conditions, and of their not occurring 



It is impossible in reading the in places where the conditions are 

 Origin of Species not to perceive j similar. Now under the theory of 

 how deeply Mr. Darwin had been | modification of species after migra- 

 impressed by the problems presented tion and isolation, their representation 

 by such singularities of plant distribu- j in distant localities is only a question 

 tion as he met with in the Galapagos, j of time and changed physical con- 

 And of such problems up to the time ditions. In fact, as Mr. Darwin well 

 of its publication no intelligible ex-j sums up, all the leading facts of dis- 

 planation had seemed possible. Sir l tribution are clearly explicable under 



Joseph Hooker had indeed prepared 

 the ground by bringing into prom- 

 inence, in numerous important papers, 

 the no less striking phenomena which 

 were presented when the vegetation 

 of large areas came to be analysed 

 and compared. No one therefore 

 could estimate more justly what Mr. 

 Darwin did for those who worked in 

 this field. How the whole theory of 



this theory ; such as the multiplica- 

 tion of new forms, the importance of 

 barriers in forming and separating 

 zoological and botanical provinces ; 

 the concentration of related species in 

 the same area ; the linking together 

 under different latitudes of the in- 

 habitants of the plains and mountains, 

 of the forests, marshes, and deserts, 

 and the linking of these with the 



