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Portugal, with its unrivalled strategical harbour at Lisbon, was an analogous case in our old oceanic wars, and since it was capable of being in a measure isolated from the strength of our great rival by naval means we were there almost uniformly successful.
The different orders of insects inhabiting Madeira present nearly parallel cases. Oceanic islands are sometimes deficient in animals of certain whole classes, and their places are occupied by other classes; thus in the Galapagos Islands reptiles, and in New Zealand gigantic wingless birds, take, or recently took, the place of mammals.
The large one had not arrived when I was in town last week. Sir C. Lyell's chapter on Oceanic Islands I think very good. Believe me, dear Darwin, yours very faithfully, Down, Bromley, Kent, S.E. April 9, 1868. My dear Wallace, You allude in your note to several points which I should much enjoy discussing with you did time and strength permit. I know Dr.
It was now he and Ian. There was no strain. "Old Steadfast" and "Old Saracen," and a long pilgrimage together, and every difference granted, yet, in the background, a vast, an oceanic unity.... Ian rose from the settle. He and the laird of Glenfernie sat by the table and with pen and paper made a diagram of escape.
In the chain of the Kuriles Professor John Milne counted fifty-two well-defined volcanoes, of which nine, perhaps more, are certainly active. They are not so high as those of Kamtschatka; but, on the other hand, they rise from very deep oceanic waters, and have been probably built up from the sea bottom by successive eruptions of tuff, lava, and ash.
The third prominent aboriginal type was that of the fishermen of the coast of British Columbia, especially the Haidas of the Queen Charlotte Islands. The most important features of their environment were the submerged coast with its easy navigation, the mild oceanic climate, and the dense pine forests. The Haidas, like the Iroquois, appear to have been a people who were still advancing.
All the foregoing remarks on the inhabitants of oceanic islands, namely, the scarcity of kinds the richness in endemic forms in particular classes or sections of classes, the absence of whole groups, as of batrachians, and of terrestrial mammals notwithstanding the presence of aërial bats, the singular proportions of certain orders of plants, herbaceous forms having been developed into trees, &c., seem to me to accord better with the view of occasional means of transport having been largely efficient in the long course of time, than with the view of all our oceanic islands having been formerly connected by continuous land with the nearest continent; for on this latter view the migration would probably have been more complete; and if modification be admitted, all the forms of life would have been more equally modified, in accordance with the paramount importance of the relation of organism to organism.
Just as over the little plain at Maryborough, protected by the surrounding forest from the action of the wind, the heated air accumulates over the surface until carried off in eddies, so, though on a vastly larger scale, in that great bight formed by the coasts of North and South America, having for its apex the Gulf of Mexico, there is an immense area in the northern tropics, nearly surrounded by land, forming a vast oceanic plain, shut off from the regular action of the trade-winds by the great islands of Cuba and Hayti, where the elements of the hurricane accumulate, and at last break forth.
If the conception seem to any one chilly, if it have a dreary look, if it appear to leave only a frosty metallic base, instead of the grand oceanic effervescence of life, let him remember how often earthly authors have renounced living realities, all personal sympathies and pleasures, communing only with books, their minds dwelling apart from men.
The day that navigation, now a routine, shall become a mathematic; the day we shall, for instance, seek to know why it is that in our regions hot winds come sometimes from the north, and cold winds from the south; the day we shall understand that diminutions of temperature are proportionate to oceanic depths; the day we realize that the globe is a vast loadstone polarized in immensity, with two axes an axis of rotation and an axis of effluvium intersecting each other at the centre of the earth, and that the magnetic poles turn round the geographical poles; when those who risk life will choose to risk it scientifically; when men shall navigate assured from studied uncertainty; when the captain shall be a meteorologist; when the pilot shall be a chemist; then will many catastrophes be avoided.
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