Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/650

634 Its scientific name might mislead one, for its head is just as much crested as its aquatic brother's. The only differences between them, apparent at first sight, are these: The terrestrial animal is somewhat stouter, his nose is longer, his eye brighter, his tail less flattened and less crested, and his color is a dusky orange, deepening into brown on the hind-quarters. His habits of life are very different, as he does not go near the sea, but lives upon land-plants, and makes a burrow for himself in the sand and among the fragments of lava. He spreads his hind-legs flat on the ground, raises his chest to the height of his fore-legs, and then nods and winks at you in a very odd way. It looked to me very much like swallowing, and I thought it possible that the creature, with his head in that position, swallowed air like a toad, as a means of breathing—swallowing into the lungs, not into the stomach.

One of our most interesting adventures was landing in a little bay full of seals, so tame, or rather so little afraid of men, that we could tramp past groups of sleepers on the beach without awakening half of them, and without apparently frightening half of those that we did awake. They seemed to be fond of crawling under bushes just above high-water mark, and sleeping, two or three in a place, huddled close together. Under one bush lay a mother and her two cubs, so fearless that one of our officers held a piece of cracker to the old one, and she smelled it in his fingers as fearlessly as if she had been a pet dog. The cubs quarrelled with each other as to which should cuddle nearest the mother, and they all three snarled and snapped at the flies in the manner of a sleepy dog, and all this while a party of ladies and gentlemen, creatures as large as the seals, and which the seals could scarce have seen before, stood looking on within touching distance. These seals had much more length of arm, and used their arms more in the manner of a quadruped, than I had supposed any seal could do. I saw them walk on the beach with the whole chest clear of the ground, and even jump upon the sand. Their favorite gymnastic exercise, however, was to lie upon their backs and roll, in the manner of a horse. The tameness of these seals and of many of the land-birds was very surprising; the Bluntnoses were more shy than we had expected. I repeatedly put my fingers within half an inch of little yellow-birds and phoebes, and within six inches of mocking-birds. On James Island the birds were so numerous and so tame that, while I was trying the experiment whether whistling to a yellow-bird would divert his attention so much as to make him allow me to touch him, six other birds—including two mocking-birds—came up and alighted on twigs within two yards of the yellow-bird to see what was going on between us. As for the flies, their tameness and pertinacity of adhesion, at the Galapagos, goes far beyond all travellers' accounts. I knew a good house-keeper In New England who affirmed that house-flies could not be driven out of a room unless you struck and killed one or two, in order to show the others that you were in earnest. You cannot drive the Galapagos flies from you even with that expedient. The birds and seals are not frightened by being stoned or shot; they don't know what stones and guns mean, and the flies are not frightened or discouraged by having any amount of their comrades killed. When a boat was coming off-shore, the usual occupation, in order to prevent carrying the nuisances on ship, was for everybody to be picking the flies off themselves (almost as they would burrs), killing them, and throwing them into the water, from the time of leaving the beach to the arrival on the deck of the ship; and the last fly slaughtered before you go into the cabin is no more afraid of you than the first one you slew at the beach. They are not all biting flies; we have escaped trouble from mosquitoes and biting flies during the whole voyage, but they are crawling, tickling, adhesive, tantalizing creatures. It was pleasant to find here at the Galapagos a species of penguin, smaller and more sober in dress than our old friends of the Straits of Magellan, but with the same winning, cunning manners that made the birds in the Straits such favorites with our party. And, while speaking of the birds of these islands, I would not forget the splendid flamingoes, six feet high, of which we got many fine specimens. They sailed about in parties of 12 or 20 birds together, making long lines of scarlet flame floating through the air. We tried their flesh on the table, and found it the most delicious game, fully equal to the canvas-back, as it seemed to us. The archipelago offers at present a fine opportunity for a naturalist, who desires to make a residence here for several years, and thoroughly explore their structure, and their productions, to throw a strong light upon the great modern question of the origin of species, and the doctrines of evolution. Younger than Juan Fernandez, purely volcanic, bringing no seeds with them from the bottom of the sea, not having had time to alter and. amend species introduced from the main-land, how did these islands come in possession of their peculiarly-organized beings—their Bluntnoses, for example? This was the question constantly recurring to me during my visit to the Galapagos, as it had been at Juan Fernandez. Prof. Agassiz gave us a little talk one day on our way to Panama, and discussed the same point. Expressing his warm admiration for Darwin's moral and intellectual character, and earlier scientific labors, he said that he considered