Origin of Species Variorum

Comparison with 1861

are the same on both sides; we meet with analogous facts on many islands separated by similar channels from Australia. The West Indian Islands stand on a deeply submerged bank, nearly 1000 fathoms in depth, and here we find American forms, but the species and even the genera are distinct. As the amount of modification in all cases depends to a certain degree on the lapse of time, and as during changes of level it is obvious that islands separated by shallow channels are more likely to have been continuously united within a recent period to the mainland than islands separated by deeper channels, we can understand the frequent relation between the depth of the sea and the degree of affinity of the mammalian inhabitants of islands with those of a neighbouring continent,— an inexplicable relation on the view of independent acts of creation.

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.

are the same on both sides; and so it is with all the islands near the shores of Australia. The West Indian Islands, on the other hand, stand on a deeply submerged bank, nearly 1000 fathoms in depth, and here we find American forms, but the species and even the genera are quite distinct. As the amount of modification which animals of all kinds undergo, partly depends on the lapse of time, and as islands separated from each other or from the mainland by shallow channels are more likely to have been continuously united within a recent period than islands separated by deeper channels, we can understand how it is that a relation exists between the depth of the sea separating two mammalian faunas, and the degree of their affinity,— a relation which is quite inexplicable on the theory of independent acts of creation.