A Geographical History of Mammals

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University Press, 1896 - 400 pages
 

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Page 362 - Boreal. of the latter, and occupying the summits of the Coast Ranges in California and of many of the desert ranges of the Great Basin. "The Transition zone, as its name indicates, is a zone of overlapping of Canadian and Sonoran types.
Page 138 - The West Indian Islands have been long isolated and have varied much in extent. Originally, they probably formed part of Central America, and may have been united with Yucatan and Honduras in one extensive tropical land. But their separation from the continent took place at a remote period, and they have since been broken up into numerous islands, which have probably undergone much submergence in recent times. This has led to that poverty of the higher forms of life, combined with the remarkable...
Page 130 - European miocene formations will render it possible that the colonisation has taken place the other way, and that these birds have attained their wonderful multiplicity and diversity of forms in Austro-Columbia and Australasia simply in consequence of the very favourable nature of the conditions to which they have been exposed in that country. I confess I incline to the latter supposition. The distribution of Psittacula, for instance, is quite unintelligible to me upon any other supposition than...
Page 345 - The retreat of cold at the termination of this period was not complete, and our continent has never regained its former warmth. Hence the expelled species were not permitted to advance more than a short distance into the region formerly occupied by them, and the tropical species have been held back and at the present day are not found except along the extreme southern confines of our territory. For example, peccaries in early Pleistocene times ranged northward over a large part of western America,...
Page 28 - Its central and most important masses consist of Australia and New Guinea, in which the main features of the region are fully developed. To the north-west it extends to Celebes, in which a large proportion of the Australian characters have disappeared, while Oriental types are mingled with them to such an extent that it is rather difficult to determine where to locate it. To the south-east it includes New Zealand, which is in some respects so peculiar, that it has even been proposed to constitute...
Page 345 - The llama and many plants now inhabiting the Andes may be looked upon as representing a class of cases in which Boreal forms were driven so far south that they actually reached the great mountain system of South America and spread southward over its elevated plateaus and declivities to the extreme end of the continent in Patagonia and Terra del Fuego.
Page 224 - So far as I am able to judge, every circumstance as to the distribution of life is consistent with the view that the...
Page 45 - R^*™"an the Sandwich Islands, which from their bird-fauna are regarded as entitled to distinction from the Polynesian region. Of the birds of this area, Mr WL Sclater ' writes that the greater number not only of the species, but even of the genera "are peculiar and wholly restricted to these islands. It is, of course, among the smaller land-birds (Passeres) that this individuality is most marked ; but even in the other groups, where the distribution is generally wider, the Hawaiian birds are, in...
Page 5 - ... temperature predetermines the possibilities of distribution ; it fixes the limits beyond which species cannot pass ; it defines broad trans-continental belts within which certain forms may thrive if other conditions permit, but outside of which they cannot exist, be the other conditions never so favourable.
Page 124 - The distinctness is, however, by no means confined to mammals and birds. Of the land molluscs, Mr AH Cooke1 writes that they present a marked contrast to those of North America. " Instead of being scanty, they are exceedingly abundant ; instead of being small and obscure, they are among the largest in size, most brilliant in colour, and most singular in shape that are known to exist. At the same time they are, as a whole, isolated in type, and exhibit but little relation with the Mollusca of any...

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