352 THE HISTORY AND SCOPE OF ZOOLOGY IX 



establishment of Darwinism, — tlie one (palaeontology) 

 by direct evidence of organic evolution in time, the 

 other (zoo-geography) in a more indirect way. 



Alfred Russell Wallace stands prominently forward 

 as a naturalist -traveller who by his observations, 

 chiefly on Lepidopterous Insects, in both South 

 America and the Malay Archipelago, was led to the 

 conclusion that a production of new species is actually 

 going on, and that, too, by means of a process of 

 natural selection of favourable variations. AVallace 

 and Darwin, who each recognised cordially and fully 

 the other's work, laid their views before the Linnean 

 Society on the same day — 1st July 1858. 



The facts of the geographical distribution of ani- 

 mals were systematised, and great zoo-geographical 

 provinces first clearly recognised, by P. L. Sclater ^ in 

 1858. The application of the Darwinian theory to 

 the facts tabulated by Sclater, combined with a 

 knowledge of the distribution of animals in past geo- 

 logical periods, has led to a full explanation of the 

 migrations of terrestrial animals, and has furnished a 

 striking corroboration of the sufficiency of the doctrine 

 of organic evolution, as reformed by Darwin, to 

 account for all the phenomena of Zoology. 



The study of the marine fauna by means of the 

 dredge and trawl had been enthusiastically prosecuted 

 by British, French, and Scandinavian naturalists in 

 the two decades before Darwin's book ; the collection 

 of forms, the discovery of new species, and the record- 

 ing of their bathymetrical and local distribution had 



1 Journal of the Proc. Linncmn Soc. Zool. vol. ii. p. 130. 



