Gilbert and Ellice Islands 12 January 1916 by the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Order in Council, 1915. Fanning Island and Washington Island also became included in the colony together with the islands of the Union Islands (now known as Tokelau); Christmas Island was included in 1919 but was contested by the U.S. under its Guano Islands Act of 1856. The Union Islands were transferred to New Zealand in 1926. The Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony continued to be administered by a Resident Commissioner. In 1930 the Resident Commissioner, Arthur Grimble, issued revised laws, "Regulations for the good Order and Cleanliness of the Gilbert and
Endemism in the Hawaiian Islands was critical to the formulation of his theory of evolution is far exceeded in the more isolated Hawaiian Islands. The relatively short time that the existing main islands of the archipelago have been above the surface of the ocean (less than 10 million years) is only a fraction of time span over which biological colonization and evolution have occurred in the archipelago. High, volcanic islands have existed in the Pacific far longer, extending in a chain to the northwest; these once mountainous islands are now reduced to submerged banks and coral atolls. Midway Atoll, for example, formed as a volcanic