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. köideHarper and brothers, 1876 - 503 pages |
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Page 48
... forms whose numbers were intact . Some would probably diminish and rapidly die out ; others which produced favourable varieties , might be so modified by natural selection as to maintain their existence under a different form ; and such ...
... forms whose numbers were intact . Some would probably diminish and rapidly die out ; others which produced favourable varieties , might be so modified by natural selection as to maintain their existence under a different form ; and such ...
Page 49
... forms of life have been preserved , which , in the more extensive and more varied continents have long given way to higher types . How complex then must have been the actions and reactions such a state of things would bring about ; and ...
... forms of life have been preserved , which , in the more extensive and more varied continents have long given way to higher types . How complex then must have been the actions and reactions such a state of things would bring about ; and ...
Page 50
... forms of life ; while to naturalists , who were acquainted with the essential differences of structure , it was a never - failing source of surprise , that under climates and conditions so apparently identical , such strangely divergent ...
... forms of life ; while to naturalists , who were acquainted with the essential differences of structure , it was a never - failing source of surprise , that under climates and conditions so apparently identical , such strangely divergent ...
Page 51
... forms most nearly allied to it . To those who accept the theory of development as worked out by Mr. Darwin , and the views as to the general permanence and immense antiquity of the great continents and oceans so ably developed by Sir ...
... forms most nearly allied to it . To those who accept the theory of development as worked out by Mr. Darwin , and the views as to the general permanence and immense antiquity of the great continents and oceans so ably developed by Sir ...
Page 54
... form but one primary region . To obviate some of these difficulties a binary or dichotomous division is sometimes ... forms of animal and vegetable life , do bear some approximate relation to extent of area . Although the possession ...
... form but one primary region . To obviate some of these difficulties a binary or dichotomous division is sometimes ... forms of animal and vegetable life , do bear some approximate relation to extent of area . Although the possession ...
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Common terms and phrases
absence abundant Abyssinia affinities Africa and Madagascar allied Amphibia animals antelopes arctic Asia Austral Australian region beetles belong birds Borneo Burmah Carnivora Celebes Central Ceylon characteristic China climate Coleoptera confined Cosmopolite Cosmopolite Cosmopolite deposits desert distribution district east Eocene epoch Ethiopian Ethiopian region European excl existing extend families fauna forests Formosa genera genus geographical globe groups Guinea Himalayas hy¿nas India inhabit Insectivora insects islands Java land large number less lizards Machairodus Madagascar Madeira 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 regions but Australian remarkable represented reptiles rhinoceros South America southern sub-region Sumatra tapir Tasmania temperate Tertiary Thibet Timor Tropical Africa tropical regions types Ungulata West Africa 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 37 - Straits, so that it is possible to go from Cape Horn to Singapore or the Cape of Good Hope without ever being out of sight of land ; and owing to the intervention of the numerous islands of the Malay Archipelago the journey might be continued under the same conditions as far as Melbourne and Hobart...
Page 402 - Temperate South America ; while 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...
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." That certain divisions, or "regions," bounded by distinct lines of demarcation, exist to represent the natural method of distribution of animals or plants on the earth's surface, is a fact readily provable....
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 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 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...
Page 76 - is undoubtedly a legitimate and highly probable supposition, and it is an example of the way in which a study of the geographical distribution of animals may enable us to reconstruct the geography of a bygone age. ... It...
Page 400 - 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.