The Geographic Distribution of Life in North America: With Special Reference to the Mammalia

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Biological Society of Washington, 1892 - 64 pages

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Page 51 - Hardly less uncertain and irregular are the effects of climate. Hot countries usually differ widely from cold ones in all their organic forms ; but the difference is by no means constant, nor does it bear any proportion to difference of temperature. Between frigid Canada and sub-tropical Florida there are less marked differences in the animal productions than between Florida and Cuba or Yucatan, so much more alike in climate and so much nearer together.
Page 50 - ... north. But if we now cross over the narrow strait, about fifty miles wide, which separates Florida from the Bahama Islands, we find ourselves in a totally different country, surrounded by a vegetation which is essentially tropical and generally identical with that of Cuba. The change is most striking, because there is no difference of climate, of soil, or apparently of position, to account for it...
Page 15 - Baird (in 1866) stated that along the valleys of the Rio Grande and Gila the fauna of the Central province "is greatly mixed up with the peculiar fauna of northern Mexico, which, as far as its summer birds indicate, is almost entitled to be considered as a fourth main province.
Page 13 - This name has been very generally applied to the Pacific coast region of the United States. It was first recognized by the botanist De Candolle in 1820. Pickering, in 1830, named it the...
Page 15 - He defined it as extending south to the tropic, west to the Gulf of California and the Colorado River, north to the prairie region of the United States, and separated on the east from the Gulf of Mexico by a northward extension of the Central American region along the lowlands bordering the coast. Prof.
Page 58 - AND NEARCTIC REGIONS. It is no part of the purpose of the present address to discuss the distribution of life outside of our own continent, but it so happens that the Boreal element in America resembles that of Eurasia so closely that in the judgment of many eminent authorities the two constitute but a single primary region, a view in which I heartily concur.
Page 26 - Pacific, covering nearly the whole country south of latitude 43° and reaching northward on the Great Plains and Great Basin to about latitude 48°.
Page 14 - The difference in the flora of the South Atlantic and Gulf States from that of the Northern States was recognized by the Danish botanist Schouw as early as 1822 in the ' Realm of Magnolias, or Pursh's Realm,' which he then proposed for the region between the parallels of 30° and 36° north latitude.
Page 22 - American Fauna, No. 5, August, 1891) I went a step further, defining the treeless parts of the "Neutral or Transition zone," and characterizing an " Upper Sonoran zone," as distinguished from the Lower or True Sonoran ; but nothing was said as to the relations of these zones with those long recognized in the East. The time has now arrived, however, when it is possible to correlate the Sonoran zones of the West with corresponding zones in the East, as was done two years ago in the case of the Boreal...
Page 16 - Grande," but differs wholly from that of Upper California. In accordance with these facts he afterwards (in 1866) made Lower California a sub-division of the central province. Later in the same year (1859) Le Conte stated that a few species of insects from Cape St. Lucas, '' though all new, indicate a greater resemblance to the fauna of the Lower Colorado than to that of maritime California; this province may therefore be found eventually to belong to the interior district.

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