Читать книгу Roraima and British Guiana, With a Glance at Bermuda, the West Indies, and the Spanish Main онлайн

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A curious circumstance in connection with the fauna of the West Indies is the number of species of birds, animals, and reptiles peculiar to certain islands, and those islands actually within sight of others. For instance, the Santa Cruz deer is distinct from the deer of St. Vincent or Tobago. The frogs of Dominica and the snakes of Martinique differ from those found elsewhere. The “Imperial Parrot”[21] from Dominica, is unknown in the other islands. Regarding humming-birds, Wallace says that “the West Indian islands possess fifteen distinct species, belonging to eight different genera, and these are so unlike any found on the continent that five of these genera are peculiar to the Antilles.”

The cave-haunting Guacharos are found in Trinidad, as well as on the mainland of South America, but they have not reached the more northerly islands. It may be that the isolation of species is not so in reality, but owes its apparent existence to a want of knowledge, as the recesses of many of the densely wooded islands have still to be explored.