CH. i] HISTORICAL 3 



transgression of the sea. Thence the creatures dis- 

 persed, multiplying, migrating and accommodating 

 themselves, each according to its kind, in a country 

 which possessed the greatest variety of physical 

 features, where snow r -clad mountains arise from a 

 semi-tropical lowland. That at least some of these 

 wanderings wrought change in the emigrants is clearly 

 expressed by the statement that Noah's children, 

 presumably all Semites, became the founders of the 

 white and black races of mankind. The environ- 

 mental conditions in Africa made Ham's descendants 

 melanistic. It was a crude way of accounting for 

 things, and yet, if we honestly condense all our up- 

 to-date knowledge into one sentence, the result 

 would not be very much superior. At best our 

 treatise is a Romance of Land and Water. 



CHAPTER I 



HISTORY OF GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION 



THE first general ideas about geographical dis- 

 tribution may be found in some of the numerous 

 speculations contained in Buffon's Histoire naturelle, 

 the brilliant style of which greatly enhanced the 

 interest taken in natural history. The first special 

 treatise on the subject was, however, written in 1777 



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