which, being a small land-bird, is not likely ever to have had any other visitors from its original parent species coming over from Europe to keep up the original breed. Lastly, it is very much more easy for insects and land-mollusca to be conveyed to such islands by wind and floating timber than it is for terrestrial mammals, or even than it is for small birds and bats; but yet such means of transit are not sufficiently sure to admit of much recruiting from the mainland for the purpose of keeping up the specific types. Consequently, the insects and the land-shells present a much greater proportion of peculiar species--namely, one half and one fourth of the land-shells in the one case, and one eighth of the beetles in the other. All these correlations, I say, are abundantly intelligible on the theory of evolution; but who shall explain, on the opposite theory, why orders of beetles and land-mollusca should have been chosen from among all other animals for such superabundant creation on oceanic islands, so that in the Azores alone we find no less than 32 of the one and 14 of the other? And, in this connexion, I may again allude to the peculiar species of beetles in the island of Madeira. Here there are an enormous number of peculiar species, though they are nearly all related to, or included under the same genera as, beetles on the neighbouring continent. Now, as we have previously seen, no less than 200 of these species have lost the use of their wings. Evolutionists explain this remarkable fact by their general laws of degeneration under disuse, and the operation of natural selection, as will be shown later on; but it is not so easy for special creationists to explain why this enormous number of peculiar species of beetles should have been deposited on Madeira, all allied to beetles on the nearest continent, and nearly all deprived of the use of their wings. And similarly, of course, with all the peculiar species of the Bermudas and the Azores. For who will explain, on the theory of independent creation, why all the peculiar species, both of animals and plants, which occur on the Bermudas should so unmistakably present American affinities, while those which occur on the Azores no less unmistakably present European affinities? But to proceed to other, and still more remarkable, cases. _The Galapagos Islands._--This archipelago is of volcanic origin, situated under the equator between 500 and 600 miles from the West Coast of South America. The depth of the ocean around them varies from 2,000 to 3,000 fathoms or more. This group is of particular interest, from the fact that it was the study of its fauna which first suggested to Darwin's mind the theory of evolution. I will, therefore, begin by quoting a short passage from his writings upon the zoological relations of this particular fauna.