Page - 440 - in The Origin of Species

440 ORIGIN OF SPECIES almost every product of the land and of the water bears the unmistakeable stamp of the American continent. There are twenty-six land-birds; of these, twenty-one, or perhaps twenty-three, are ranked as distinct species, and would com- monly be assumed to have been here created : yet the close affinity of most of these birds to American species is mani- fest in every character, in their habits, gestures, and tones of voice. So it is with the other animals, and with a large proportion of the plants, as shown by Dr. Hooker in his admirable Flora of this archipelago. The naturalist, looking at the inhabitants of these volcanic islands in the Pacific, distant several hundred miles from the continent, feels that he is standing on American land. Why should this be so? why should the species which are supposed to have been created in the Galapagos Archipelago, and nowhere else, bear so plainly the stamp of affinity to those created in America? There is nothing in the conditions of life, in the geological nature of the islands, in their height or climate, or in the proportions in which the several classes are asso- ciated together, which closely resembles the conditions of the South American coast: in fact, there is a considerable dissimilarity in all these respects. On the other hand, there is a considerable degree of resemblance in the volcanic na- ture of the soil, in the climate, height and size of the islands, between the Galapagos and Cape Verde Archipelagoes: but what an entire and absolute difference in their inhabitants ! The inhabitants of the Cape Verde Islands are related to those of Africa, like those of the Galapagos to America. Facts such as these, admit of 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 from America, whether by occasional means of transport or (though I do not believe in this doctrine) by formerly continuous land, and the Cape Verde Islands from Africa; 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 al- most universal rule that the endemic productions of islands t are related to those of the nearest continent, or of the near-