been exposed on the mainland of Europe, began to sport a great deal in
various directions, and being acted upon here by new conditions, soon
assumed under stress of natural selection totally distinct specific
forms. (You see, I have quite mastered your best modern scientific
vocabulary.) For instance, there were at first no insects of any sort
on the islands; and so those plants which in Europe depended for their
fertilisation upon bees or butterflies had here either to adapt
themselves somehow to the wind as a carrier of their pollen or else to
die out for want of crossing. Again, the number of enemies being
reduced to a minimum, these early plants tended to lose various
defences or protections they had acquired on the mainland against slugs
or ants, and so to become different in a corresponding degree from
their European ancestors. The consequence was that by the time you men
first discovered the archipelago no fewer than forty kinds of plants
had so far diverged from the parent forms in Europe or elsewhere that
your savants considered them at once as distinct species, and set them
down at first as indigenous creations. It amused me immensely.

For out of these forty plants thirty-four were to my certain knowledge
of European origin. I had seen their seeds brought over by the wind or
waves, and I had watched them gradually altering under stress of the
new conditions into fresh varieties, which in process of time became
distinct species. Two of the oldest were flowers of the dandelion and
daisy group, provided with feathery seeds which enable them to fly far
before the carrying breeze; and these two underwent such profound
modifications in their insular home that the systematic botanists who
at last examined them insisted upon putting each into a new genus, all
by itself, invented for the special purpose of their reception. One
almost equally ancient inhabitant, a sort of harebell, also became in
process of time extremely unlike any other harebell I had ever seen in