The Geographical Distribution of Animals: With a Study of the Relations of Living and Extinct Faunas as Elucidating the Past Changes of the Earth's Surface, 2. köide

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Macmillan and Company, 1876 - 503 pages
 

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Page 346 - ... so completely intermediate between the anserine birds on the one side, and the storks and herons on the other, that it can be ranged with neither of these groups, but must stand as the type of a division by itself.
Page 536 - ... catalogued on a uniform plan, and with a uniform nomenclature, a thoroughly satisfactory account of the Geographical Distribution of Animals will not be possible.
Page 5 - Richness combined with isolation is the predominant feature of Neotropical zoology, and no other region can approach it in the number of . its peculiar family and generic types.
Page 203 - ... elk. Erasmus Stella describes the elk as existing in Prussia in the early part of the sixteenth century (' De Borussiae antiquitatibus,' in Novus Orbis regionum ac insularum veteribus incognitarum (Paris, 1532), p. 507 [wrongly numbered 497] sq.) The elk or moose deer still ranges over the whole of Northern Europe and Asia as far south as East Prussia, the Caucasus, and North China. It was once common in the forests of Germany and France, and is still found in some parts of Norway and Sweden,...
Page 174 - Condylura (1 species), the star-nosed mole, inhabits Eastern North America from Nova Scotia to Pennsylvania; Scapanus (2 species) ranges across from New York to St.
Page 329 - It is a large, brown, long-legged, weakly-formed and loosely-crested bird, having such anomalies of structure that it is impossible to class it along with any other family. It is one of those survivors, which tell us of extinct groups, of whose past existence we should otherwise, perhaps, remain for ever ignorant.
Page 326 - ... Philippines (where indeed they were first discovered by Europeans), Labuan, and even the Nicobars — though none is known from the intervening islands of Borneo, Java or Sumatra. Within what may be deemed their proper area they are found, says AR Wallace (Ceogr. Distr. Anitnals, ii. 341), " on the smallest islands and sandbanks, and can evidently pass over a few miles of sea with ease.
Page 354 - ... and perhaps the main one — in bringing about the extinction of many of the larger species of these wingless birds. The wide distribution of the Struthiones may, as we have already suggested (VoL I., p. 287.), be best explained, by supposing them to represent a very ancient type of bird, developed at a time when the more specialized carnivorous mammalia had not come into existence, and preserved only in those areas which were long free from the incursions of such dangerous enemies.
Page 370 - ... before we reach the Arctic Circle — we cannot expect the two Northern regions to exhibit any great variety or peculiarity. Yet in their warmer portions they are tolerably rich; for, of the 25 families of snakes, 6 are found in the Nearctic region, 10 in the...
Page 537 - Some of these coincident variations have been alluded to in various parts of this work, but they have never been systematically investigated. They constitute an unworked mine of wealth for the enterprising ' explorer ; and they may not improbably lead to the discovery of some of the hidden laws (supplementary to Natural Selection), which seem to be required, in order to account for many of the external characteristics of animals.

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