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44 climate, most are employed in some of the manufactures, which must always be conducted on the land. They have adopted sundry contrivances for warding off the extreme heat and the attacks of the insects, and so manage to live in tolerable comfort. But they are looked down upon by us, and cannot help feeling themselves to be an inferior kind of beings to us who are endowed by nature with the necessary faculties for a subaqueous life. It is possible that in earlier times, when the land was actually inhabited and that pretty thickly by the race who have left monuments of their art and industry on the land, the climate of this region was very different from what it is now. When the climate gradually changed and aquatic habits became indispensable there can be no doubt that natural selection caused the gradual extinction of those who were unfit for subaqueous life."

"I see," I rejoined, "this is only another instance to be added to the many known examples of the 'survival of the fittest.'"

"Exactly so," he replied, "but as the choice lay between living in water or dying on land, the love of life acted as a very powerful stimulus for promoting the acquirement of aquatic habits.

"Possibly," he continued, "many might become seasoned or acclimatized to the dreadful heat and even to the noxious insects; but there is another plague these islands are subject to which none can resist, and that is the terrible volcanic eruptions to which they are exposed. You noticed that one of the hills on this the largest island is an active crater, at present only emitting a thin stream of vapour. But at uncertain times the most frightful eruptions take place sometimes in this, sometimes in one or several