Postage stamps and postal history of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands the same day. BRC's Gilbert and Ellice Definitive Stamps Postage stamps and postal history of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands The first mail service to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands was ad hoc, depending on which ships were calling at the various islands. A regular service began in 1911; Edward VII postage stamps of Fiji were overprinted and put on sale on 1 January of that year, followed in March by a set of four stamps depicting a "Pandanus" tree, inscribed . These were followed in 1912 by George V stamps of the common type, inscribed . A new definitive
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