|
small
→would the chance be
of a seed falling on favourable soil, and coming to maturity! But it would be a great error to argue that because a well-stocked island, like Great Britain, has not, as far as is known (and it would be very difficult to prove this), received within the last few centuries, through occasional means of transport, immigrants from Europe or any other continent, that a poorly-stocked island, though standing more remote from the mainland, would not receive colonists by similar means.
→Out of twenty
seeds or animals transported to an island, even if far less well-stocked than Britain,
more than one would be so well fitted to its new home, as to become naturalised. But
→as it seems to me,
is no valid argument against what would be effected by occasional means of transport, during the long lapse of geological time, whilst
island was being
and
before it had become fully stocked with inhabitants. On almost bare land, with few or no destructive insects or birds living there, nearly every
which chanced to arrive,
→if fitted for the climate, would be sure to
germinate and survive. |
| The identity of many plants and animals, on mountain-summits, separated from each other by hundreds of miles of lowlands, where
Alpine species could not possibly exist, is one of the most striking cases known of the same species living at distant points, without the apparent possibility of their having migrated from one
the other. It is indeed a remarkable fact to see so many
the same
living on the snowy regions of the Alps or Pyrenees, and in the extreme northern parts of Europe; but it is far more remarkable, that the plants on the White Mountains, in the United States of America, are all the same with those of Labrador, and
|
