president's address. 



On a comparison of the respective schemes of Messrs. Wallace 

 and Allen, it is obvious that they must have been influenced by 

 quite different considerations. Not one of the primary regions of 

 the two authors is accepted with the same limits by both, and some- 

 times they differ radically. Mr. Allen recognizes as a peculiar 

 realm (the "Arctic realm ") a division which is considered neutral 

 territory belonging to the Palasarctic and Nearctic regions by Mr. 

 Wallace ; he degrades the Indian and African realnis to subdivi- 

 sions of a common Indo-African realm, but subtracts from the 

 former the Malagasy region to raise it to the rank of an indepen- 

 dent realm — the Lemurian — co-equal with the Indo-African. He 

 further adds, a South American temperate realm and an Antarctic 

 realm. The examination and analysis of the evidence which has 

 led to such different results will be instructive and lead up to some 

 interesting deductions. We may aptly commence this examination 

 by a glance at the several '^ realms " concerning which there is an 

 approximate agreement. But the premises upon which Messrs. 

 Wallace and Allen have worked should be first stated. 



The conception of Mr. Wallace as to the character of the primary 

 zoogeographical regions or zoological continents is, that " it is a 

 positive, and by no means an unimportant, advantage to have our 

 named regions approximately equal in size, and with easily defined, 

 and therefore easily remembered, boundaries," providing that "we 

 do not violate any clear affinities or produce any glaring irregu- 

 larities." It is further claimed that "all elaborate definitions of 

 interpenetrating frontiers, as well as regions extending over three- 

 fourths of the land surface of the globe, and including places which 

 are the antipodes of each other, would be most inconvenient, even 

 if there were not such difference of opinion about them."* 



Again, Mr. Wallace says: "On two main points every system 

 yet proposed, or that probably can be proposed, is open to objec- 

 tion ; they are, — istly, that the several regions are not of equal 

 rank ; — andly, that they are not equally applicable to all classes of 



* Wallace, Geog. Dist. Anim., vol. i, pp. 63, 64. 



