Note 812 — Chapter XIII · —Island Peoples

Islands, because of their relatively limited area and their clearly defined boundaries, are excellent fields for the study of floral, faunal, and ethnic distribution. Small area and isolation cause in them poverty of animal and plant forms and fewer species than are found in an equal continental area. This is the curse of restricted space which we have met before. The large island group of New Zealand, with its highly diversified relief and long zonal stretch, has only a moderate list of flowering plants, in comparison with the numerous species that adorn equal areas in South Africa and southwestern Australia.812 Ascension possessed originally less than six flowering plants. The four islands of the Greater Antilles form together a considerable area and have all possible advantages of climate and soil; but there are probably no continental areas equally big and equally favored by nature which are so poor in all the more highly organized groups of animals.813 Islands tend to lop off the best branches. Darwin found not a single indubitable case of terrestrial mammals native to islands situated more than three hundred miles from the mainland.814 The impoverishment extends therefore to quality as well as quantity, to man as well as to brute. In the island continent of Australia, the native mammalia, excepting some bats, a few rodents, and a wild dog, all belong to the primitive marsupial sub-class; its human life, at the time of the discovery, was restricted to one retarded negroid race, showing in every part of the island a monotonous, early Stone Age development. The sparsely scattered oceanic islands of the Atlantic, owing to excessive isolation, were all, except the near-lying Canaries, uninhabited at the time of their discovery; and the Canary Islanders showed great retardation as compared with their parent stock of northern Africa. [See map page 105.]