422 
GALAPAGOS ARCHIPELAGO 
CHAP. 
Hence we have the truly wonderful 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 Island, of the twenty-six 
aboriginal Galapageian plants, twenty-two are confined to this 
one island, that is, only four are at present known to grow in 
the other islands of the archipelago ; and so on, as shown in 
the above table, with the plants from Chatham and Charles 
Islands. This fact will, perhaps, be rendered even more 
striking, by giving a few illustrations:—thus, Scalesia, a 
remarkable arborescent genus of the Compositae, is confined to 
the archipelago : it has six species ; one from Chatham, one 
from Albemarle, one from Charles Island, two from James 
Island, and the sixth from one of the three latter islands, but 
it is not known from which : not one of these six species grows 
on any two islands. Again, Euphorbia, a mundane or widely 
distributed genus, has here eight species, of which seven are 
confined to the archipelago, and not one found on any two 
islands : Acalypha and Borreria, both mundane genera, have 
respectively six and seven species, none of which have the 
same species on two islands, with the exception of one Borreria, 
which does occur on two islands. The species of the Compositae 
are particularly local; and Dr. Hooker has furnished me with 
several other most striking illustrations of the difference of the 
species on the different islands. He remarks that this law of 
distribution holds good both with those genera confined to the 
archipelago, and those distributed in other quarters of the 
world : in like manner we have seen that the different islands 
have their proper species of the mundane genus of tortoise, and 
of the widely distributed American genus of the mocking- 
thrush, as well as of two of the Galapageian sub-groups of 
finches, and almost certainly of the Galapageian genus 
Amblyrhynchus. 
The distribution of the tenants of this archipelago would 
not be nearly so wonderful, if, for instance, one island had 
a mocking-thrush, and a second island some other quite 
distinct genus ;—if one island had its genus of lizard, and 
a second island another distinct genus, or none whatever ;— 
or if the different islands were inhabited, not by representative 
species of the same genera of plants, but by totally different 
