The fifteen kinds of sea-fish
which I procured here are all new species; they belong to
twelve genera, all widely distributed, with the exception of
Prionotus, of which the four previously known species live
on the eastern side of America.
Of land-shells I collected
sixteen kinds (and two marked varieties), of which, with the
exception of one Helix found at Tahiti, all are peculiar to
this archipelago: a single fresh-water shell (Paludina) is
common to Tahiti and Van Diemen's Land. Mr. Cuming,
before our voyage procured here ninety species of sea-shells,
and this does not include several species not yet specifically
examined, of Trochus, Turbo, Monodonta, and Nassa. He
has been kind enough to give me the following interesting
results: Of the ninety shells, no less than forty-seven are
unknown elsewhere - a wonderful fact, considering how
widely distributed sea-shells generally are. Of the forty-
three shells found in other parts of the world, twenty-five
inhabit the western coast of America, and of these eight are
distinguishable as varieties; the remaining eighteen (including
one variety) were found by Mr. Cuming in the Low
Archipelago, and some of them also at the Philippines. This
fact of shells from islands in the central parts of the Pacific
occurring here, deserves notice, for not one single sea-shell is
known to be common to the islands of that ocean and to the
west coast of America. The space of open sea running north
and south off the west coast, separates two quite distinct
conchological provinces; but at the Galapagos Archipelago
we have a halting-place, where many new forms have been
created, and whither these two great conchological provinces
have each sent up several colonists.
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