belief in
the general principle that islands have always been islands has not
been shaken," and he entirely rejects "the hypothesis of a Pacific
continent." He comes back, in full view of the problems on the spot,
to the position from which, as has been seen, Darwin started: "If the
distribution of a particular group of plants or animals does not seem to
accord with the present arrangement of the land, it is by far the safest
plan, even after exhausting all likely modes of explanation, not to
invoke the intervention of geographical changes; and I scarcely think
that our knowledge of any one group of organisms is ever sufficiently
precise to justify a recourse to hypothetical alterations in the present
relations of land and sea." ("Observations of a Naturalist in the
Pacific between 1896 and 1899", London, 1903, I. page 380.) Wallace
clinches the matter when he finds "almost the whole of the vast areas of
the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, and Southern Oceans, without a solitary
relic of the great islands or continents supposed to have sunk beneath
their waves." ("Island Life", page 105.)

Writing to Wallace (1876), Darwin warmly approves the former's "protest
against sinking imaginary continents in a quite reckless manner, as
was stated by Forbes, followed, alas, by Hooker, and caricatured by
Wollaston and (Andrew) Murray." ("Life and Letters", III. page 230.)
The transport question thus became of enormously enhanced importance. We
need not be surprised then at his writing to Lyell in 1856:--"I cannot
avoid thinking that Forbes's 'Atlantis' was an ill-service to science,
as checking a close study of means of dissemination" (Ibid. II. page
78.), and Darwin spared no pains to extend our knowledge of them. He
implores Hooker, ten years later, to "admit how little is known on the
subject," and summarises with some satisfaction what he had himself
achieved:--"Remember how recently you and others thought that salt
water would soon kill seeds... Remember that no one knew that seeds would
remain for many hours in the crops of birds and retain their vitality;
that fish eat seeds, and that when the fish are devoured by birds the
seeds can germinate, etc. Remember that every year many birds are blown
to Madeira and to the Bermudas. Remember that dust is blown 1000 miles
across the Atlantic." ("More Letters", I. page 483.)

It has always been the fashion to minimise Darwin's conclusions, and
these have not escaped objection. The advoc