this grand fact can receive no sort of explanation on the ordinary view
of independent creation; whereas on the view here maintained, it is
obvious that the Galapagos Islands would be likely to receive
colonists, whether by occasional means of transport or
by formerly continuous land, from America; and the Cape de Verde
Islands from Africa; and that such colonists would be liable to
modification; the principle of inheritance still betraying their
original birthplace.
Many analogous facts could be given: indeed it is an almost universal
rule that the endemic productions of islands are related to those of
the nearest continent, or of other near islands. The exceptions are
few, and most of them can be explained. Thus the plants of Kerguelen
Land, though standing nearer to Africa than to America, are related,
and that very closely, as we know from Dr. Hooker s account, to those
of America: but on the view that this island has been mainly stocked by
seeds brought with earth and stones on icebergs, drifted by the
prevailing currents, this anomaly disappears. New Zealand in its
endemic plants is much more closely related to Australia, the nearest
mainland, than to any other region: and this is what might have been
expected; but it is also plainly related to South America, which,
although the next nearest continent, is so enormously remote, that the
fact becomes an anomaly. But this difficulty almost disappears on the
view that both New Zealand, South America, and other southern lands
were long ago partially stocked from a nearly intermediate though
distant point, namely from the antarctic islands, when they were
clothed with vegetation, before the commencement of the Glacial period.
The affinity, which, though feeble, I am assured by Dr. Hooker is real,
between the flora of the south-western corner of Australia and of the
Cape of Good Hope, is a far more remarkable case, and is at present
inexplicable: but this affinity is confined to the plants, and will, I
do not doubt, be some day explained.
The law which causes the inhabitants of an archipelago,
though specifically distinct, to be closely allied to those of the
nearest continent, we sometimes see displayed on a small scale, yet in
a most interesting manner, within the limits of the same archipelago.
Thus the several islands of the Galapagos Archipelago are tenanted, as
I have elsewhere shown, in a quite marvellous manner, by very closely
related species; so that the inhabitants of each separate island,
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