The

Galapagos

The Spanish Bishop of Panama, Fray Tomás de Berlanga officially discovered the Galapagos Islands, on March 10, 1535. The bishop's vessel departed from Panama bound for Peru. His ship was caught in a current that carried it to the islands. In a dispatch written afterwards, Fray Tomás reported the story to the King, including descriptions of the incredibly tame wildlife, the huge tortoises and unusual iguanas.

It was Charles Darwin's September 1835 exploration of the Galapagos, while serving as a naturalist on the British ship HMS Beagle, and his subsequent 1859 publication "On the Origin of Species by Natural Selec-

tion" that first brought the world's attention to the islands. The collections made by Darwin produced a revolution in human thought, which we can still feel now. Today, the Galapagos remain a living laboratory of evolution where animals have no fear of man. These incredible islands harbor the rarest species known.  This group of 13 major islands and dozens of smaller islets and rocks -all the result of volcanic activity - certainly appear to be out of this world. They are, in fact, an unpredictable wilderness, filled with an extraordinary population of unique species that have developed apart from humans and their dominating influence.  Located 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador in the Pacific Ocean, the

archipelago is a National Park. In an effort to preserve the islands as they were centuries ago, the Galapagos have been declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.