146 ARE SOILS ENRICHED, IMPOTERISHED, px. iii. 



globe ; and in other archipelagoes a single island some- 

 times contains a species found in no other spot on the 

 whole earth.' Wings themselves furnish no exception 

 to the rule. The Creator hangs his cages containing 

 distinct birds in distinct separate regions, though those 

 distinct separate regions may have precisely the same 

 physical conditions. Lyell quotes Darwin : ' The archi- 

 pelago is a little world within itself. One is astonished 

 at the amount of creative force displayed on so many 

 small, barren, and rocky islands, and still more so at its 

 diverse, yet analogous, action on points so near each 

 other. I have said that the Galapagos archipelago 

 might be called a satellite attached to America ; but it 

 should rather be called a group of satellites, physically 

 similar, organically distinct, yet intimately related to 

 eacli other, and all related in a marked, though much 

 lesser, degree to the great American continent.' 



But the plan of the Great Creator seems, in all 

 time, and in all terrestrial space, to have gone on 

 'quahs ab incepto processerit'; and as he has subjected 

 individuals to death by years, so he has made species 

 mortal by geological change of physical conditions. 

 Nay, he has made their actual local habitations mortal. 

 It is not to man only that he has said ' dust thou art, 

 and unto dust thou shalt return,' but to the hardest 

 rock and to the hugest mountain of the hardest rock. 

 He has throughout all time made continents to come 

 and to go — to have a birth, life, death, and burial. He 

 wields the mighty power of subterranean igneous action. 



