Abstract
DR. G. B AUK'S theory of the origin of the Galapagos Islands is too well known to need explanation here; yet it may be briefly designated the theory of subsidence. He argues that the islands were formerly connected with each other, and at an earlier period with the American continent. It is also almost needless to say that this theory has met with an exceedingly hostile reception; few in deed accepting it, even as restricted to a former union of the islands themselves. The publication of an account of the botanical collectionsl affords an opportunity of examining this theory from a botanical standpoint. For the purposes of the “Botany” of the Challenger Expedition, and ever since the publication of that work, I have collected all the data coming under my notice bearing on the dispersal of plants to considerable distances by wind, water, birds or other creatures excepting human. The evidence thus collected sufficiently accounts for the vegetation of low coral islands, and the littoral vegetation of widely separated countries; but it in no way helps to explain the vegetation of the enormously distant islands of the Antarctic seas, for example, or that of the islands of the Galapagos group, to give another instance.
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References
B. L. Robinson and J. M. Greenman, in American Journal of Science, vol. 1. pp. 135–149.
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HEMSLEY, W. The Flora of the Galapagos Islands. Nature 52, 623 (1895). https://doi.org/10.1038/052623a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/052623a0