PATO RE 
217 
THURSDAY, JULY 6, 1899. 
MAMMALIAN DISTRIBUTION. 
The Geography of Mammals. By W. L. and P. L. 
Sclater. Pp. xviii + 335. Illustrated. (London: 
Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner, and Co., Ltd., 1899.) 
HIS work may be best described as being of an 
extremely conservative nature; so conservative 
indeed that the authors seem under the impression that 
scarcely any improvement or alteration in views advanced 
many years ago can by any possibility be rendered 
necessary through the general progress of science and the 
work achieved by other investigators. It may likewise be 
described as a unionist production, for, in addition to 
the names of the two authors which appear on the title- 
page, we are told in the preface that two other gentle- 
men have assisted in the compilation of the lists of 
genera. Unfortunately, although there has doubtless 
been “a union of hearts,” a union of pens is conspicuous 
by its absence ; so that, as will be shown in the course of 
this notice, there are many glaring incongruities between 
different portions of the work, while the want of cor- 
respondence in the nomenclature employed can scarcely 
be designated as anything less than appalling. 
The work really consists of three distinct sections. 
First, we have seven chapters by Mr. W. L. Sclater on 
the terrestrial regions into which the globe may be 
mapped out from the distribution of its mammals. 
Secondly, there is a chapter by the senior of the two 
authors on the marine regions indicated by the dis- 
tribution of cetaceans and sirenians. And, thirdly, the 
seven last chapters of the book, by the same hand, treat 
of the distribution of the various orders of mammals. 
As the results of their investigations, both from the 
strictly geographical and the purely zoological standpoint, 
the authors are convinced that the regions originally pro- 
posed by the senior of the two, chiefly on the evidence 
of passerine birds, are also, in the main, those best 
adapted to show the present distribution of mammals. 
For reasons which will be apparent to many of his 
readers, the present reviewer has no intention on this 
occasion of recapitulating the arguments which have 
been used against some portions of this grouping. It 
will suffice to say that he does not agree with them ; 
and criticism may well be left to American zoologists, 
who may be trusted to fight strongly in defence of their 
own views, which receive, if we may say so, somewhat 
scant justice at the hands of the Messrs. Sclater. 
Taking, then, the groupings of the regions as they stand, 
attention may be concentrated on some of the details of 
the book before us. 
Perhaps the most satisfactory feature of the book is 
the prominence given to the three primary divisions— 
Arctogzea, Neogzea, and Notogzea—into which nearly all 
authorities are agreed that the land surface of the globe 
should be parcelled out from a distributional point of 
view. We should, however, have much preferred seeing 
these great divisions indicated in the general map form- 
ing the subject of Plate I.; and the component “regions” 
into which the first is subdivided marked by colour- 
NO. 1549, VOL. 60] 
shadings. As it is, the essential difference between the 
single regions respectively constituting the two latter 
divisions and those included in the first are totally un- 
apparent. One very distinct improvement on all previous 
works on the subject we are happy to recognise. This is 
the separation of Celebes from the Australian and its 
transference to the Oriental region. But we think the 
authors have scarcely gone far enough, and that Timor 
and the Moluccas might likewise have shared in the 
same westerly shift. In any case, it seems scarcely 
justifiable to retain the term ‘“‘ Wallace’s line” solely for 
the small channel separating Bali from Lombok, seeing 
that it is generally taken to include the one between 
Borneo and Celebes. 
Admitting that the authors and the present reviewer 
“ agree to differ” in regard to the number of regions, the 
work would have had a greater value had it been a 
thoroughly up-to-date and trustworthy 7észmé of what we 
take leave to call the old-fashioned view. But is this 
really the case? As is stated in the preface, the seven 
chapters by the junior author first made their appearance 
in the Geographical Journal between the years 1894 and 
1897. They are now reprinted “with some slight altera- 
tions.” Bearing in mind the rapid movements of science 
in all its branches, to which allusion is likewise made in 
the preface, is it, we ask, fair to the author himself and 
the public at large to make what may have been very 
good in its way in 1894 do duty in 1899? 
To take one instance out of many, we find it stated on 
pp. 53 and 54 that “there can be xo doubt’ that the 
Galapagos have never, at any period of their history, 
been joined to the mainland.” Now, so far back as 1892 
(so that, by the way, the statement might have been in- 
cluded in the original paper) the late Dr. George Baur * 
wrote the following sentence :—‘‘ That it has been made 
probable that the Galapagos are of continental origin, | 
consider one of the most important results of the ex- 
pedition.” And this view Dr. Baur has subsequently 
endeavoured to develop in not less than five separate 
communications. Of course the authors have every 
right to take their own view, but they have no justifica- 
tion either to ignore the existence of an opposite opinion, 
or for the use of the words “no doubt.” 
Dogmatism is indeed much too apparent throughout 
the book. For example, on p. 217 we find the statement 
(by the senior author) that certain views 
“would tend in favour of the now generally accepted doc- 
trine that the principal masses of land and water are not 
of modern origin, but have existed in shez present shapes 
throughout all ages.” 
In regard to this astounding statement, we may well ask 
whether the author is acquainted with a work which has 
attained some celebrity on the continent—to wit, the 
second edition of Neumayr’s “Erdgeschichte.” If not, 
his attention may be directed to the map on p. 203 of the 
second volume ; and if he can say that the continents 
then retained “their present shapes,” he evidently puts 
a different interpretation on the word shape than the one 
to which we are accustomed. 
But without the aid of foreign works the author may, 
1 The italics in this and other quotations are the reviewer's. 
2 Proc. Amer. Antiquarian Soc. fur 1891. 
L 
