The Galapagos archipelago (a chain of many islands) is made up of thirteen major islands located on the Equator about 600 miles west into the Pacific Ocean from the coast of Ecuador, South America. The Galapagos Islands are made up of thirteen major islands, six smaller islets, and fifty still smaller islets and rocky formations.1
In 1835, Charles Darwin stepped off his voyage ship the HMS Beagle onto the Galapagos Islands and after observing a variety of birds known today as finches and collecting specimens of them declared, "...Seeing this gradation and diversity of structure in one small, intimately related group of birds, one might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends."2