Evolution / by Patrick Geddes and J. Arthur Thomson.

  • Patrick Geddes
Date:
[1911?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Evolution / by Patrick Geddes and J. Arthur Thomson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    different islands and on the continent were blood-relations with a common descent ? Thus it was that in the Galapagos Archipelago Darwin felt himself “ brought near to the very act of creation.” “ My attention,” Darwin writes, 46 was first thoroughly aroused by comparing together the numerous specimens, shot by myself and several other parties on board, of mocking thrushes, when, to my astonishment, I dis¬ covered that all those from Charles Island belonged to one species (Mimus trifasciatus); all from Albemarle Island to M. parvulus; and all from James and Chatham Islands (between which two other islands are situ¬ ated as connecting links) belonged to M. melanotis.” All subsequent investigations have con¬ firmed Darwin’s observations, both in their general result and in details. Thus it has since been shown by Ridgway that the thrushes from James and Chatham Islands of the same group are also of distinct species. And of one hundred and twenty-eight specimens of a lizard called Tropidurus collected by the “ Albatross ” from eight of the islands, Dr. Baur writes just as Darwin did: “I was not a little astonished to find that nearly every island contained a peculiar race or species of