June 2 2, 1876] 



NA TURE 



167 



highly educated class of naturalists within the last fifty 

 years, it was not until 1857 that the plan of determining 

 the great zoological regions of the earth's surface not 

 from ct priori reasons of heat and cold, nor from the ordi- 

 nary views of geographers, but by the minute study of 

 the actual ranges of the more important and best known 

 groups of animals was suggested. Mr. Sclater's Regions, 



then originally established from consideration of the 

 ranges of the principal families and genera of birds, were 

 quickly applied by Dr. Glinther to reptiles and batra- 

 chians, and subsequently by Mr. Sclater himself to 

 mammals. Working from the same stand-point, various 

 naturalists have of late years tried to improve upon 

 them, amongst others Mr. Blanford, Mr, Blytb, and 



Fig. 2. — Scene in New Guinea. 



Prof. Huxley. Mr. Wallace will have none of these— 

 nay, so convinced is he of the correctness of Mr. Sclater's 

 original " happy thoughts "^ — that he will not even listen 

 to the inventor's own emendations of his original regions. 

 "So that we do not violate any clear affinities" — he 

 observes, " or produce any glaring irregularities, 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 easily remembered boundaries." 



He therefore condemns "all elaborate definitions of 

 inter-penetrating frontiers " and " regions extending over 

 three-fourths of the land-surface of the globe" as "most 

 inconvenient — even if there were not such differences of 

 opinion about them." He admits that the "most radical 



