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of the world.
The Galapagos are so recent that some of the islands are barely covered with the most scanty vegetation, itself peculiar to these islands.
Some parts of their surface are entirely bare, and a great many of the craters and lava streams are so fresh, that the atmospheric agents have not yet made an impression on them.
Their age does not, therefore, go back to earlier geological periods; they belong to our times, geologically speaking.
Whence, then, do their inhabitants (animals as well as plants) come?
If descended from some other type, belonging to any neighboring land, then it does not require such unspeakably long periods for the transformation of species as the modern advocates of transmutation claim; and the mystery of change, wi th such marked and characteristic differences between existing species, is only increased, and brought to a level with that of creation.
If they are autochthones, from what germs did they start into existence?
I think that careful observers, in view of these facts, will have to acknowledge that our science is not yet ripe for a fair discussion of the origin of organized beings. . . .
There is little to tell for the rest of the
