226 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



One prime reason of success is that the most successful of the imported 

 species have come from another portion of the same great faunal region, while 

 others have been received from the region most nearly allied, viz., the Oriental.*' 



Mr. Perkins then turns to the darker side of the picture for the natural- 

 ist's point of view and forecasts what will be the result of all these 

 importations on the endemic fauna. He says sooner or later the greater 

 part of this most interesting native fauna is in all probability doomed 

 to extinction. 



Investigations such as those here advocated should be undertaken 

 by a competent naturalist. He should not only be a good collector, but 

 a keen observer, in fact, a naturalist in the true sense of the term; for 

 unless the work is well done it had almost be better left undone. There 

 are many examples of collecting being so imperfectly done as to lead 

 to very erroneous conclusions. It takes time for a naturalist to become 

 acquainted with the local types. The endemics do not show themselves, 

 as usually the conditions of life are such that insects, for example, live 

 retired lives and are not seen, while those that manifest themselves are 

 often foreigners. 



It is, perhaps, scarcely necessary to point out that the biological 

 investigation of islands is not a matter of interest to the systematist 

 only, but it is of great importance in connection with the problems of 

 geographical distribution of animals and plants, some of which open up 

 fascinating vistas of the extension of continents in former ages and of 

 their partial submergence, while others relate to the when and how of 

 the peopling of remote islands. Then there are to be considered the 

 bearing of specific and individual varieties on the intricate questions of 

 the origin of species and of evolution in general, and the adaptation of 

 peculiar forms to their particular localities as well as those wonderful 

 inter-relations between plants and plants, plants and animals, animals 

 and animals, and between all and their environment. In a word, all 

 those problems which are to be classed under the term ethologyf require 

 painstaking and immediate study; probably no branch of the study of 

 life is of such pressing importance as this, for everywhere ' the old order 

 change th' and it is that ' old order ' which we have to discover. 



The extermination of animal life is more rapid and striking than that of 

 plants, but what has been stated for animals applies equally to plants. 



More than twenty years ago the late Professor H. 1ST. Moseley raised 

 a note of warning and the concluding sentences of his ' Notes by a Nat- 

 uralist on H. M. S. Challenger ' are as follows : 



With regard to any future scientific expeditions, it would, however, be well 

 to bear in mind that the deep sea, its physical features and its fauna, will 



* Science, loc. cit., p. 396. 



f ' Natural History, Oncology or Ethology,' W. M. Wheeler, Science, N. S., 

 Vol. XV., June 20, 1902, p. 971. 



