INTRODUCTION 19 



Origin and Migration 



The crude idea of centers of origin and dispersal, or migration of differ- 

 ent kinds of animals, is a very ancient one. Even Moses' treatise on Noah's 

 ark and the spread of its passengers was probably not the first attempt 

 at a theory of geographic origin and distribution of the beasts and birds, 

 because this theory had its antecedents in the traditions of Mesopotamia. 

 There is no question that these myths strongly influenced the early at- 

 tempts at scientific explanation. For the approaches to modern views 

 one should read successively the writings of the great French naturalists 

 Buffon and Cuvier. We find in Buffon,^ who wrote in the middle of the 

 eighteenth century, many instances of anticipation of what are commonly 

 regarded as modern views. 



Buffon's laws of animal distribution were regarded by Cuvier as veri- 

 table discoveries. They set forth some of the fundamental principles of 

 geographic distribution, contrasting successively all the continents (Eu- 

 rope and Asia, or Eurasia, Africa, North America, and Australia), and 

 enumerating especially the kinds of animals which each possessed and in 

 which each was lacking. In comparing the new and old worlds, Buffon 

 observed that the quadrupeds of North America were of smaller size than 

 those of Eurasia and Africa, since the largest North American animals 

 were inferior to the elephants, rhinoceroses, and hippopotami of Africa. 

 His second remark is more important: it is, that the North American 

 animals form a parallel or collateral animal kingdom which more or less 

 duplicates that of the Old World with some important exceptions, and 

 this remark may be construed as an anticipation of the law of evolution of 

 analogous groups on large continental surfaces. Every animal, he re- 

 marked further, has its natural country or habitat, a fact which links 

 zoology with geography. His theory of evolution — and he certainly 

 was an evolutionist — may be kno^vn to-day as Buffon's law of the di- 

 rect action of the environment upon the organism; he believed 

 that climate or environment exerted the strongest influence in the modi- 

 fication of animal forms. ^ Thus he attributed the shades of color in the 

 skin of human races to the more or less intense action of the sun. 



Palaeogeography, or the study of the past relations of the land and sea 

 surfaces of the globe, also had its beginnings in Buffon's time. In com- 

 menting on the giant extinct fauna, the mammoths (Elephas primigenius) 

 and woolly rhinoceroses (Rhinoceros tichorhinus), which had been made 

 known in northern Asia and Hibcria through the explorations of Pallas, and 

 on the former distribution of the elephants in North America, Buffon 

 significantly pointed out that parts of the globe now submerged beneath 



' Georges Louis Leelere, Comte dc Buffon, 1707-1788. Edition of Buffon's works here 

 referred to is the first, Histoire naturelle generalc et particuli^rc, avec la description du cabi- 

 net du Roi, 1749-1789, 44 vols., illustrated, including Supplements. Flourens's Buffon, 

 Histoire de Ses Travaux et de Ses Idees, 12mo, Paris, 1844, is based on this edition. 



