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About a month after leaving Juan Fernandez we reached the Galapagos, a group of volcanic islands lying under the equator, their black and rugged shores having a most uninviting appearance.

The inhabitants of the Cape de Verde Islands are related to those of Africa, like those of the Galapagos to America. I believe this grand fact can receive no sort of explanation on the ordinary view of independent creation. pp. 398-9. Now what can be more simply reconcilable with that theory than Mr.

The peculiarity of some islands in having all their inhabitants of dusky colors as the Galapagos may also perhaps be explained on the same principles; for poisonous fruits or seeds may there abound, which weed out all white or light-colored varieties, owing to their deficiency of smell and taste.

Now if we look to the species which inhabit the Galapagos Archipelago, and are likewise found in other parts of the world, we find that they differ considerably in the several islands.

Belonging to Equador State are the Galapagos Islands, 500 miles westward. Of course we did not visit them, but they are remarkable for their giant tortoises and their wild cattle, donkeys and dogs. It is said that these dogs do not bark, having forgotten how to; but they develop the power after contact with domestic ones.

The general principles of distribution appear with greatest clearness when an examination is made of the animals and plants of isolated regions like islands. The Galapagos Islands constitute a group that has figured largely in the literature of the subject, partly because Darwin himself was so impressed by what he found there in the course of his famous voyage around the world in the "Beagle."

Reaching the isolated area in question the natural factors of evolution would lead their offspring of later generations to vary from the original parental types, and so the peculiar Galapagos species would come into being.

It proved to be Chatham Island, one of the Galapagos, a group of volcanic islands almost under the line, some hundred miles away from the coast of Peru. We brought up in a fine bay, but the shore as far as we could see looked black and barren. There were, however, thick, low bushes of a peculiar kind, covering the ground at some distance from the beach.

Those to the north of this line include the Sandwich Islands, the Mariana or Ladrone Islands, South Island, and Bonin Sima; south of the equator, the Galapagos, New Britain, Salomon, Santa Cruz, New Hebrides, the Friendly and Society Isles.

The beach was the home of numbers of galapagos a kind of turtle so called from an archipelago in the equinoctial sea, where also they abound, and mentioned by Arthur Pym as supplying food to the islanders, It will be remembered that Pym and Peters found three of these galapagos in the native boat which carried them away from Tsalal Island.