36 THE AUDUBON BULLETIN 
and etchings and will be warmly welcomed by his many admirers. Much 
of his work was done from boats in a swamp, or sitting on a camp stool in 
forest or field. 
Some of the finest paintings are those of the Whistling Swans in a 
mountain scene and a Roseate Spoonbill. There are two paintings of the 
Bob-White Quail, the symbol of the Illinois Audubon Society for almost 50 
years. Russ Williams writes that the Quail is found in 38 states with Illinois 
having one of the largest concentrations. 
The enchantment of these reproductions of Richard Bishop is that 
they bring you right up front where the colors and features are. Not merely 
small objects, they look as “front-row” as though they flew over your blind. 
— Raymond Mostek 
DARWIN’S ISLANDS: A Natural History of the Galapagos. 
By Ian Thornton, Natural History Press, Doubleday and Co., 277 Park Ave., 
New York. $7.95. Illustrated. 322 pages. 1971. 
Though I have never visited the Galapagos, I have had the extreme plea- 
sure of bicycling around the Canary Islands. There is a mild similarity in 
the two: both are volcanic and rugged; the latter has an area of 2,808 
square miles, while the Galapagos cover an area of 2,869 square miles and 
are ten times further from the mainland. 
Once called the Enchanted Isles, the Galapagos will be eternally as- 
sociated with the visit and studies of Charles Darwin. Had the HMS Beagle 
never dropped anchor in 1835 at Galapagos, it is quite possible that Darwin’s 
name would be lost to history. Darwin grew to maturity in a world which 
rarely questioned established religious dogma. His father was a country 
doctor, and one grandfather was a botanist and physician. It was his 
mother who was the non-conformist. Unwilling to accept the teachings of 
the fundamentalists, she became a Unitarian. 
Darwin enrolled in Edinburgh University to study medicine, but became 
disinterested. He later enrolled in Cambridge to study for the ministry, but 
his inquiring mind, found the courses boring. He managed to move into 
the field of natural history. His father ranted that he would never amount 
to anything: the country doctor thundered, “You care only for animals.” 
Darwin was only 22 years of age when he left on the voyage of the Beagle. 
He was almost fifty when his “On the Origin of the Species” was first 
published. 
Darwin’s studies on the Galapagos convinced him that living things 
were not divinely created. It was his examination of the islands’ thirteen 
similar species of dull-colored finches that led him to another significant, 
and startling conclusion — that evolution occurs by natural selection. 
The humanist and scientist, Dr. Thomas Huxley, became Darwin’s 
champion and declared that “Origin of the Species” freed science from the 
idolatries of special creation to the purer faith of evolution. Thornton’s 
chapter on “Darwin’s Finches” is perhaps one of the best in the book. 
Thornton’s observations on the Galapagos Hawk are worth noting. He 
quotes Brosset, who in 1963 declared that there were not more than 200 on 
the islands. Thornton writes: “For some reason, one does not expect tame- 
ness in a hawk; yet the Galapagos Hawk is very tame. These birds have 
the habit of following a man and coming down to investigate any unusual 
