416 



CHARLES DARWIN 



shores. The proportion of 100 flowering plants out of 18$ 

 (or 175 excluding the imported weeds) being new, is suffi- 

 cient, I conceive, to make the Galapagos Archipelago a dis- 

 tinct 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 peculiarity of the 

 Galapageian Flora is best shown in certain families; — thus 

 there are 21 species of Compositae, of which 20 are peculiar 

 to this archipelago; these belong to twelve genera, and of 

 these genera no less than ten are confined to the archipelago ! 

 Dr. Hooker informs me that the Flora has an undoubtedly 

 Western American character; nor can he detect in it any 

 affinity with that of the Pacific. If, therefore, we except the 

 eighteen marine, the one fresh-water, and one land-shell, 

 which have apparently come here as colonists from the 

 central islands of the Pacific, and likewise the one distinct 

 Pacific species of the Galapageian group of finches, we see 

 that this archipelago, though standing in the Pacific Ocean, 

 is zoologically part of America. 



If this character were owing merely to immigrants from 

 America, there would be little remarkable in it; but we see 

 that a vast majority of all the land animals, and that more 

 than half of the flowering plants, are aboriginal productions. 

 It was most striking to be surrounded by new birds, new rep- 

 tiles, new shells, new insects, new plants, and yet by innumer- 

 able trifling details of structure, and even by the tones of 

 voice and plumage of the birds, to have the temperate plains 

 of Patagonia, or rather the hot dry deserts of Northern Chile, 

 vividly brought before my eyes. Why, on these small points 

 of land, which within a late geological period must have 

 been covered by the ocean, which are formed by basaltic lava, 

 and therefore differ in geological character from the Ameri- 

 can continent, and which are placed under a peculiar climate, 

 — why were their aboriginal inhabitants, associated, I may 

 add, in different proportions both in kind and number from 

 those on the continent, and therefore acting on each other 

 in a different manner — why were they created on American 

 types of organization? It is probable that the islands of the 

 Cape de Verd group resemble, in all their physical conditions, 

 far more closely the Galapagos Islands, than these latter 



