relationship with those of America, though separated from that
continent by an open space of ocean, between 500 and 600 miles in
width. The archipelago is a little world within itself, or rather a
satellite attached to America, whence it has derived a few stray
colonists, and has received the general character of its indigenous
productions. Considering the small size of the islands, we feel the
more astonished at the number of their aboriginal beings, and at their
confined range. Seeing every height crowned with its crater, and the
boundaries of most of the lava-streams still distinct, we are led to
believe that within a period geologically recent the unbroken ocean was
here spread out. Hence, both in space and time, we seem to be brought
somewhat near to that great fact--that mystery of mysteries--the first
appearance of new beings on this earth.
Of terrestrial mammals, there is only one which must be considered as
indigenous, namely, a mouse (Mus Galapagoensis), and this is confined,
as far as I could ascertain, to Chatham Island, the most easterly
island of the group. It belongs, as I am informed by Mr. Waterhouse,
to a division of the family of mice characteristic of America. At
James Island, there is a rat sufficiently distinct from the common kind
to have been named and described by Mr. Waterhouse; but as it belongs
to the old-world division of the family, and as this island has been
frequented by ships for the last hundred and fifty years, I can hardly
doubt that this rat is merely a variety produced by the new and
peculiar climate, food, and soil, to which it has been subjected.
Although no one has a right to speculate without distinct facts, yet
even with respect to the Chatham Island mouse, it should be borne in
mind, that it may possibly be an American species imported here; for I
have seen, in a most unfrequented part of the Pampas, a native mouse
living in the roof of a newly built hovel, and therefore its
transportation in a vessel is not improbable: analogous facts have been
observed by Dr. Richardson in North America.
Of land-birds I obtained twenty-six kinds, all peculiar to the group
and found nowhere else, with the exception of one lark-like finch from
North America (Dolichonyx oryzivorus), which ranges on that continent
as far north as 54 degs., and generally frequents marshes. The other
twenty-five birds consist, firstly, of a hawk, curiously intermediate
in structure between a buzzard and the American group of
carrion-feeding Polybori; and with these latter birds it agrees most
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