90 OBJECTIONS TO THE HYPOTHESIS [pt. i 



those still further away (RR, RC, and C, in diminishing numbers 

 as one goes up the scale). This is a general rule for all endemics 

 of the tropics and the south, and is impossible to explain on any 

 theory of dying out. 



Yet another difficulty, considered below in Chapter xv, is to 

 explain why the endemics should belong in larger proportion to 

 the large and "successful" families and genera than to the small 

 and broken ones which we have been accustomed to consider 

 moribund. 



Or again, why should those genera, like Gunnera, in which 

 there are no wides at all, behave exactly like those in which 

 there are such? And why do not the moribund species congre- 

 gate in special regions, so to speak, reserved for derehcts, instead 

 of choosing each its own special location? Why should many 

 Eugenias in Ceylon choose each its own mountain upon which 

 to die? 



To these one may add the following notes and queries, which 

 if not successfully answered, are very fatal to the view that 

 endemics are chiefly relicts : 



{a) How, on the view that endemics are relicts, is it possible 

 to predict Avhat has already been successfully predicted by the 

 aid of Age and Area? 



(6) How are the facts of the regular graduation of species, of 

 narrowly localised endemics up, and of wides down, to be ex- 

 plained at all? 



(c) Why is there no difference in behaviour between endemic 

 genera and species? 



{d) Why does a genus behave in just the same way in New 

 Zealand (for example), whether endemic with small area, en- 

 demic with large, endemic in New Zealand, endemic in New 

 Zealand and islands, endemic in New Zealand and Austraha, or 

 endemic in New Zealand and the rest of the world? 



(e) Why are the endemics of the same order of rarity whether 

 there are or are not wides in the same genera? 



(/) Why should the islands round New Zealand have more 

 endemics the more wides they have (129, p. 332)? 



{g) Why are the endemics of New Zealand least numerous at 

 the ends of the islands and not in the middle, and the wides the 

 same (128, p. 201)? 



(/i) Why do the endemics that reach the ends of New Zealand 

 range on the average so much farther than those in the middle 

 (127, p. 448)? 



