NEW CLIMATES AND LIFE DISTRIBUTIONS. 315 



are subjected to extreme diversity of climate, and conse- 

 quent variety of vegetable and animal life ; were the lands 

 of the future to be arranged more latitudinally, a greater 

 uniformity of climate would prevail, and with this uni- 

 formity a corresponding sameness in the specific distribution 

 of vitality. The existing land-masses bulk most largely in 

 the northern hemisphere ; we can readily perceive how dif- 

 ferent the climatic and vital arrangements of the globe 

 were they mainly disposed in the southern. The trade- 

 winds, tides, and oceanic currents the great modifiers of 

 climate are interrupted in their normal continuity by the 

 longitudinal disposition of the existing continents, and 

 thrown into minor and complex deviations ; how different 

 the result did the disposition of the land permit them to 

 revolve in simple and unbroken continuity ! On the whole, 

 it may be safely assumed, that the greater the difference be- 

 tween future and existing continents in position and climate, 

 the greater will be the difference in their vital appointments; 

 and thus the future, from those physical causes alone, would 

 present a totally different life-picture from the present. 

 There might be no new creations nor developments, but 

 there would be extensive re-arrangements and re-assortments 

 of the existing extermination of certain genera and species 

 and increase of others, and along with these a corresponding 

 redistribution of the varieties of the human family itself. 

 We have said " there might be no new creations nor de- 

 velopments," and yet it is difficult to conceive of any exten- 

 sive alterations in the distribution of sea and land, without 

 associating with them newer phases of vegetable and animal 

 existence. In the history of the past, new developments of 

 life are so intimately associated with geographical changes, 

 and every newer formation so distinctively characterised by 

 its own peculiar and higher species, that whatever the law 

 by which the succession of vitality on our globe is gov- 



