the island by means of floating timber; for, of course, no
explanation can be suggested why special creation of this highly
peculiar insect fauna should have run so disproportionately into the
production of weevils. About two-thirds of the whole number of beetles,
or over 80 species, show no close affinity with any existing insects,
while the remaining third have some relations, though often very remote,
with European and African forms. That this high degree of peculiarity
is due to high antiquity is further indicated, according to our theory,
by the large number of species which some of the types comprise. Thus,
the 54 species of _Cossonidae_ may be referred to three types; the 11
species of _Bembidium_ form a group by themselves; and the _Heteromera_
form two groups. "Now, each of these types may well be descended from a
single species, which originally reached the island from some other
land; and the great variety of generic and specific forms into which
some of them have diverged is an indication, and to some extent a
measure, of the remoteness of their origin[25]." But, on the
counter-supposition that all these 128 peculiar species were separately
created to occupy this particular island, it is surely unaccountable
that they should thus present such an arborescence of natural affinities
amongst themselves.

[24] Wallace, _Island Life_, p. 287.

[25] Wallace, _Island Life_, p. 287.

Passing over the rest of the insect fauna, which has not yet been
sufficiently worked out, we next find that there are only 20 species of
indigenous land-shells--which is not surprising when we remember by what
enormous reaches of ocean the island is surrounded. Of these 20 species
no less than 13 have become extinct, three are allied to European
species, while the rest are so highly peculiar as to have no near allies
in any other part of the globe. So that the land-shells tell exactly the
same story as the insects.

Lastly, the plants likewise tell the same story. The truly indigenous
flowering plants are about 50 in number, besides 26 ferns. Forty of the
former and ten of the latter are peculiar to the island, and, as Sir
Joseph Hooker tells us, "cannot be regarded as very close specific
allies of any other plants at all" Seventeen of them belong to peculiar
genera, and the others all differ so markedly as species from their
congeners, that not one comes under the category of being an insular
form of a continental species.