"The often-repeated description of the stately palm, and other noble tropical plants, then birds, and lastly man, taking possession of the coral islets as soon as formed, in the Pacific, is probably not quite correct; I fear it destroys the poetry of this story, that feather and dirt-feeding and parasitic insects and spiders should be the first inhabitants of newly formed oceanic land." -Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle
Voyage of the Beagle was Darwin's first book and here he is already challenging long-held theories -this one of island succession. Would be an interesting exercise to do a stable isotope analysis of the organisms on St. Paul's Island.
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Splitting time between the natural gas paper and editorial duties.. and laundry.
"The often-repeated description of the stately palm, and other noble tropical plants, then birds, and lastly man, taking possession of the coral islets as soon as formed, in the Pacific, is probably not quite correct; I fear it destroys the poetry of this story, that feather and dirt-feeding and parasitic insects and spiders should be the first inhabitants of newly formed oceanic land." -Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle
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