APR 29 1904 



PSYCHK. 



A FAUNAL AND FLORAL TABULATION-SCHEME. 



BY ALBERT P. MORSE, WELLESLEY, MASS. 



In olden times learned cartographers drew at the king's command charts of 

 the world as they imagined it to be, and placed thereon quaint representations of 

 the strange creatures of their dreams or of legendary folk-lore handed down from 

 who knows what horizon — dark hints, it may be, of the reptilian age, transmitted 

 through the quivering nerves of fear. When some adventurous savage, wandering 

 in a remote ravine of the unpenetrated fastnesses, first gazed upon the uncouth 

 remains of gigantic monsters of the past emerging from the cliffs, who shall depict 

 his amazement, his unfathomable awe, his naked terror ? ' Who would not dream 

 with him that in the far recesses of that weird land fierce shapes might yet be 

 lurking ? Does not the sea-serpent still survive ? 



Upon those charts mythical creatures flourished ; leviathan sported here, 

 behemoth ravened there, dragons of the prime uncoiled their scaly lengths in 

 caverns of the under-world, valkyrs and furies peopled the atmosphere. Later, 

 with increasing travel and observation, these delineations came to present more 

 and more resemblance to the actual realities. Polar bears and elephants, walruses 

 and camelopards, replacing the earlier monsters, frisked amid ice-floes, reveled in 

 the jungle, or galloped over the wide karroo. 



Pictures gave place to names of the beasts, strewn across the continents with 

 a careless freedom exceeded only by that of the almanac weather-prophet whose 

 " Signs of a storm " or " Grows milder with occasional showers and sometimes 

 snow " scattered down the page contributes to the gayety of the rural mind. 



At length the outline map appeared, tinted over the area known or supposed 

 to be inhabited by a species, an indispensable adjunct to scientific study of the 

 subject. Maps of this kind, illustrating the horizontal or surficial distribution, in 

 regions of simple topography and when drawn on a sufficiently large scale, may 

 represent the zonal distribution as well. But in mountainous regions and areas of 

 complex topography a scale necessary to represent adequately the zonal distribution 

 would often be impracticably large. It is for this purpose, and to facilitate by 

 tabulation the study of faunal components, that I have devised the scheme here 

 described. 



