Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/783

Rh features in common. They are, moreover, connected by a narrow submarine plateau which, perhaps, argues a former means of more intimate communication.

The general character of the Canary flora is that of the Mediterranean region. Some species show Indian or South African relationships; still fewer have American affinities. The Gulf Stream still brings drift, including seeds and the branches of trees, from the Bermudas by way of Madeira to our islands. Columbus, who made frequent visits to Gomera, found on its shores fragments of West Indian



plants, and was thereby strengthened in his belief in a western continent. An occasional east wind—such as sometimes brings armies of grasshoppers—may carry seeds from the Sahara region. Indeed, the woolly seeds of Gomphocarpus fruticosus are said to have been brought on the spiny legs of the grasshoppers. But the prevalent winds and ocean currents of to-day form a barrier between the Canaries and the continent, and among the sixteen hundred and twenty-seven species enumerated from Morocco by Ball, only two hundred and sixteen are found on these islands. That the former more effective means of communication must have been of very