Hence It Would Appear
Probable, That The Same Causes Which Here Make The Immigrants
Of Some Peculiar Species Smaller, Make Most Of The
Peculiar Galapageian Species Also Smaller, As Well As Very
Generally More Dusky Coloured.
All the plants have a
wretched, weedy appearance, and I did not see one beautiful
flower.
The insects, again, are small-sized and dull-coloured,
and, as Mr. Waterhouse informs me, there is nothing in their
general appearance which would have led him to imagine
that they had come from under the equator. [1] The birds,
plants, and insects have a desert character, and are not more
brilliantly coloured than those from southern Patagonia; we
may, therefore, conclude that the usual gaudy colouring of
the intertropical productions, is not related either to the
heat or light of those zones, but to some other cause, perhaps
to the conditions of existence being generally favourable
to life.
We will now turn to the order of reptiles, which gives
the most striking character to the zoology of these islands.
The species are not numerous, but the numbers of individuals
of each species are extraordinarily great. There is one
small lizard belonging to a South American genus, and two
species (and probably more) of the Amblyrhynchus - a genus
confined to the Galapagos Islands. There is one snake which
is numerous; it is identical, as I am informed by M. Bibron,
with the Psammophis Temminckii from Chile. [2] Of sea-
turtle I believe there are more than one species, and of
tortoises there are, as we shall presently show, two or three
species or races.
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