Islands visited by Darwin

Usage examples of galapagos.

The really surprising fact in this case of the Galapagos Archipelago, and in a lesser degree in some analogous instances, is that the new species formed in the separate islands have not quickly spread to the other islands.

Many years ago, when comparing, and seeing others compare, the birds from the separate islands of the Galapagos Archipelago, both one with another, and with those from the American mainland, I was much struck how entirely vague and arbitrary is the distinction between species and varieties.

If we compare, for instance, the number of the endemic land-shells in Madeira, or of the endemic birds in the Galapagos Archipelago, with the number found on any continent, and then compare the area of the islands with that of the continent, we shall see that this is true.

I will give only one, that of the Galapagos Archipelago, situated under the equator, between 500 and 600 miles from the shores of South America.

On the other hand, there is a considerable degree of resemblance in the volcanic nature of the soil, in climate, height, and size of the islands, between the Galapagos and Cape de Verde Archipelagos: but what an entire and absolute difference in their inhabitants!

The inhabitants of the Cape de Verde Islands are related to those of Africa, like those of the Galapagos to America.

From these considerations I think we need not greatly marvel at the endemic and representative species, which inhabit the several islands of the Galapagos Archipelago, not having universally spread from island to island.

These creatures were descended from birds: In fact, from the cormorants of the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific, which, blown there from mainland South America by contrary winds, had given up flight and taken to exploiting the sea.

But the human story of the Galapagos was otherwise pretty unhappy: mad Norwegian farmers, Ecuadorian prison camps, everybody eating the wildlife as fast as they could.

But all the Brits did to the Galapagos was send over Darwin for five weeks, and all they took away was the theory of evolution.

Then these shorebirds diversified to fill all the avian biological niches, much the way the finches that were blown to the Galapagos Islands have -within historical times -- developed many kinds of beaks to eat different types of food.

There in the infamous Galapagos, in the vast Pacific Ocean due west of Ecuador and a mere ten miles south of the Equator, Marina had come to certain life-conclusions.

Darwin went to the Galapagos to get away from the Sunday drive with his parents.