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 596 - OCEAN. The Ocean, Atmosphere, and Life. Being the Second Series of a Descriptive History of the Life of the Globe.
Page 348 - ... 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 145 - ... are the seat and birthplace of all the higher forms of life, while the southern continents have derived the greater part, if not the whole of their vertebrate fauna from the north ; but it implies the erroneous conclusion that the chief southern lands, Australia and South America, are more closely related to each other than to the northern continent. The fact, however, is that the fauna of each has been derived, independently, and perhaps at very different times, from the north, with which they...
Page 145 - ... the north, with which they therefore have a true genetic relation; while any intercommunion between themselves has been comparatively recent and superficial, and has in no way modified the great features of animal life in each. The east and west division, represents — according to our views — a more fundamental diversity; since we find the northern continent itself so divided in the earliest Eocene, and even in Cretaceous times; while we have the strongest proof that South America was peopled...
Page 538 - ... the latter. CONCLUSION. The preceding remarks are all I now venture to offer, on the distinguishing features of the various groups of land-animals as regards their distribution and migrations. They are at best but indications of the various lines of research opened up to us by the study of animals from the geographical point of view, and by looking upon their range in space and time as an important portion of the earth's history. Much work has yet to be done before the materials will exist for...
Page 148 - Palasarctic and Nearctic regions exhibit resemblances and diversities of a character not unlike those found among the animals. This is not a mere question of applying to the vegetable kingdom a series of arbitrary divisions of the earth, which have been found useful to zoologists, for it really involves a fundamental problem in the theory of evolution. The question we have to answer is, firstly, whether the distribution of plants is like that of animals, mainly and primarily dependent on the past...
Page 205 - ... 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 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 176 - 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 538 - Till every wellmarked district,—every archipelago, and every important island, has all its known species of the more important groups of animals catalogued on a uniform plan, and with a uniform nomenclature, a thoroughly satisfactory account of the Geographical Distribution of Animals will not be possible.

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