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. köideMacmillan 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. |
From inside the book
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Page 5
... tropical regions alone produce apes and elephants , parrots and peacocks , and a thousand strange quadru- peds and brilliant birds which are found nowhere in the cooler regions . So the camel , the gazelle , and the ostrich live in the ...
... tropical regions alone produce apes and elephants , parrots and peacocks , and a thousand strange quadru- peds and brilliant birds which are found nowhere in the cooler regions . So the camel , the gazelle , and the ostrich live in the ...
Page 6
... tropical islands of New Guinea and Celebes , and in America from Chili to Virginia . No crows exist in South America , while they inhabit every other part of the world , not excepting Australia . Antelopes are found only in Africa and ...
... tropical islands of New Guinea and Celebes , and in America from Chili to Virginia . No crows exist in South America , while they inhabit every other part of the world , not excepting Australia . Antelopes are found only in Africa and ...
Page 12
... tropical regions but do not range more than about 10 ° beyond the southern and 12 ° beyond the northern tropic , while the great bulk of the species are found only within an equatorial belt about 30 ° wide . But as these animals are ...
... tropical regions but do not range more than about 10 ° beyond the southern and 12 ° beyond the northern tropic , while the great bulk of the species are found only within an equatorial belt about 30 ° wide . But as these animals are ...
Page 15
... tropical forms are equally unfitted for the cold polar waters . The shore- feeding manatees , however , can only live where they find food ; and a long expanse of rocky coast would probably be as com- plete a barrier to them as a few ...
... tropical forms are equally unfitted for the cold polar waters . The shore- feeding manatees , however , can only live where they find food ; and a long expanse of rocky coast would probably be as com- plete a barrier to them as a few ...
Page 23
... tropical forms travel northwards in summer to Japan , and on the mainland as far as the valley of the Amoor . North America . - The migrations of birds in North America have been carefully studied by resident naturalists , and present ...
... tropical forms travel northwards in summer to Japan , and on the mainland as far as the valley of the Amoor . North America . - The migrations of birds in North America have been carefully studied by resident naturalists , and present ...
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Common terms and phrases
absence abundant Abyssinia affinities Africa and Madagascar allied Amphibia animals antelopes arctic Asia Austral Australia Australian region Austro-Malaya belong birds Borneo Burmah Carnivora Celebes Central Ceylon characteristic China climate Coleoptera confined Cosmopolite Cosmopolite Cosmopolite deposits distribution east Eastern Hemisphere Eocene epoch Ethiopian Ethiopian region Europe European excl existing extend extinct fauna forests Formosa genera genus geographical globe groups Guinea Himalayas hyænas India Indo-Malay inhabit insects Islands Japan Java land land-birds large number less lizards Madagascar Malacca Malay Malaya Malayan mammalia migration Miocene Miocene period Moluccas mountains Nearctic Neotropical North northern occur ocean Oriental genus Oriental region Palearctic Palearctic region Papuan peculiar forms peculiar genera peculiar genus peculiar species perhaps Philippines Pliocene possesses Post-Pliocene probably range recent regions but Australian remarkable represented reptiles rhinoceros South America southern sub-region Sumatra Tasmania temperate Tertiary Thibet Timor Tropical Africa tropical regions types whole region wholly Zealand zoological regions
Popular passages
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 326 - 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 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 57 - Eegions in the first place, from a consideration of the distribution of mammalia, only bringing to our aid the distribution of other groups to determine doubtful points. Regions so established will be most closely in accordance with those long-enduring features of physical geography, on which the distribution of all forms of life fundamentally depends;* and all discrepancies in the distribution of other classes of animals must be capable of being explained, either...
Page 64 - But in richness and variety of forms, they are both very much inferior, and are much more nearly comparable with the separate regions which compose it. Taking the families of mammalia as established by the best authors, and leaving out the Cetacea and the Bats, which are almost universally distributed, and about whose classification there is much uncertainty, the number of families represented in each of Mr. Sclater's regions is as follows : I.
Page 398 - Galaxida?) is confined to South Temperate America, Australia, and New Zealand. We have also the genus Osteoglossum confined to the tropical rivers of Eastern South America, the Indo-Malay Islands, and Australia. It is important here to notice that the heat-loving Reptilia afford hardly any indications of close affinity between the two regions, while the cold-enduring amphibia and fresh-water fish, offer them in abundance. Taking this fact in connection with the absence of all indications of close...
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 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 44 - The introduction of goats into St. Helena utterly destroyed a whole flora of forest trees, and with them all the insects, mollusca, and perhaps birds directly or indirectly dependent on them.
Page 288 - 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...