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, 1. köide

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Macmillan and Company, 1876 - 503 pages
"Wallace, together with Darwin was the founder of modern evolutionary theory, and when Darwin received Wallace's paper of 1858 (a year before the publication of the Origin of Species), he wrote to Lyell "All my originality, whatever it may amount to, will be smashed"."I never saw a more striking coincidence.Your words (referring to Lyell's earlier warnings that Darwin might be anticipated) have come true with a vengeance." In 1858 Wallace was already preparing an announcement of an importent zoogeographical discovery, which proposed a boundary line dividing the archipelago of Indo-Malayan and Australian zoological regions. The culmination of Wallace's approach was achieved in his monumental two-volume "The geographical Distribution." and it is a pioneer-work in zoogeography."--Abebooks website.

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Page 150 - Yet it is surely a marvellous fact, and one that has hardly been sufficiently dwelt upon, this sudden dying out of so many large mammalia, not in one place only but over half the land surface of the globe.
Page 328 - India consisting mainly of granite and old-metamorphic rocks, while the greater part of the peninsula is of tertiary formation, with a few isolated patches of secondary rocks. It is evident, therefore, that during much of the tertiary period,* Ceylon and South India were bounded on the north by a considerable extent of sea, and probably formed part of an extensive Southern Continent or great island. The very numerous and remarkable cases of affinity with Malaya, require, however, some closer approximation...
Page 195 - India, and even down the east coast of Africa as far as the Cape of Good Hope ; but it only breeds in the Palsearctic region, over the greater part of which it ranges.
Page 278 - ... wonderful aye-aye (Chiromys) , the insectivorous Centetidae, and carnivorous Cryptoprocta, among the Mammalia. They speak to us plainly of enormous antiquity, of long-continued isolation, and not less plainly of a lost continent or continental island, in which so many, and various, and peculiarly organized creatures, could have been gradually developed in a connected fauna, of which we have here but the fragmentary remains.
Page 328 - ... much of the Tertiary period, Ceylon and South India were bounded on the north by a considerable extent of sea, and probably formed part of an extensive Southern Continent or great island. The very numerous and remarkable cases of affinity with Malaya require, however, some closer approximation with these islands, which probably occurred at a later period. When, still later, the great plains and tablelands of Hindostan were formed and a permanent land communication effected with the rich and highly...
Page 402 - ... another species is common to New Zealand and the Auckland Islands. We cannot believe that a land connection has existed between all these remote lands within the period of existence of this one species of fish, not only on account of what we know of the permanence of continents and deep oceans, but because such a connection must have led to much more numerous and important cases of similarity of natural productions than we actually find. And if within the life of species such interchange may...
Page 149 - America, equally large felines, horses and tapirs larger than any now living, a llama as large as a camel, great mastodons and elephants, and abundance of huge megatheroid animals of almost equal size...
Page 50 - To the modern naturalist, on the other hand, the native country (or 'habitat,' as it is technically termed) of an animal or a group of animals is a matter of the first importance ; and as regards the general history of life upon the globe, may be considered to be one of its essential characters.
Page 67 - ... who cannot recognize the essential diversity of structure in such groups as swifts and swallows, sun-birds and humming-birds, under the superficial disguise caused by adaptation to a similar mode of life. The application of Mr. Allen's principle leads to equally erroneous results, as may be well seen by considering his separation of 'the southern third of Australia' to unite it with New Zealand as one of his secondary zoological divisions."t Leaving Mr.
Page 290 - The enormous disproportion between the mean height of the land and the mean depth of the ocean, which would render it very difficult for new land to reach the surface till long after the total submergence of the sinking continent. (2) The wonderful uniformity of level over by far the greater part of the ocean floor, which indicates that it is not subject to the same disturbing agencies which...

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