General Conclusions 



Carl L. Hubbs 



Scripps Institution oj Oceanography, University of 

 California, La Jolla 



1 he fourteen papers from the symposium on 

 The Origins and Affinities of the Land and Freshwater Fauna of 

 Western North America, plus the three richly supplementing contri- 

 butions from the symposium on Geographic Distribution of Con- 

 temporary Orgafiisms, constitute a vast storehouse of information on 

 zoogeography, on companion fields, and on various sciences that 

 provide the background that is necessary for a full understanding of 

 zoogeography. The seventeen contributions deal not only with the 

 actual distribution of many but of course not all groups of land and 

 freshwater animals, along with some aspects of phytogeography, but 

 also with various biogeographical topics, and with the background 

 material. Most of the contributors deal largely with western North 

 America, but a few cover all of North America, and one even 

 straddles the whole New World. 



The contributions are diverse not only in respect to the groups of 

 organisms, the areas covered, and the topics stressed, but also in the 

 angle of approach, in the length and completeness of review, in the 

 amount of original material, in the thoroughness (or lack) of docu- 

 mentation, and in the abundance, paucity, or lack of illustrations. 

 The separate articles vary from abstracts (two) and mere thoughtful 

 commentaries, on some phase of the general subject, to long, scholarly 

 studies that give us, for the first time, the summary of a distinguished 

 author's long-continued and intensive research. 



The whole volume has both the strength and the weakness that 

 goes with diversity. It is strong in the variety of viewpoints and 

 specialties, in the high competence of each invited participant in 

 some aspect of zoogeography or in one of the basically related 

 sciences, and in the potential synthesis that is favored by the close 

 association of the diverse contributions. It is weak in the fragmenta- 



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