330 



GEOGEAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF SPECIES. [Ch. XXXVIII 



sopliical spirit that, relying on the clearness of the evidence 

 obtained respecting the larger quadrupeds, he ventured to 

 call in question the identifications announced by some con- 

 temporary naturalists of species of animals said to be common 

 to the southern extremities of America and Africa.-^ 



In order to appreciate the importance and novelty of the 

 doctrine, that separate areas of land and water were the abodes 

 of distinct species of animals and x^lants, we must look back 

 to the times of Buffon and see in what crude conjectures 

 even so great a naturalist as his illustrious contemporary 

 Linnseus indulged, when speculating on the manner in which 

 the earth may first have become peopled with its present in- 

 habitants. The habitable world wa,f 



ima 



philosopher to have been for a certain time limited to one 

 small tract, the only portion of the earth's surface that was 

 as yet laid bare by the subsidence of the primceval ocean. 

 In this fertile spot the originals of all the species of plants 

 which exist on this globe were congregated together with 

 the first ancestors of all animals and of the human race. 

 ' In qua commode habitaverint animalia omnia, et ve^etabiha 

 Isete germinaverint.' In order to accommodate the various 

 habits of so many creatures, and to provide a diversity of 

 climate suited to their several natures, the tract in which the 

 creation took place was supposed to have been situated in 

 some warm region of the earth, but to have contained a lofty 

 mountain range, on the 



heights and in the declivities of 



temperat 



remote 



trom that of the torrid to that of the frozen zone.f There 

 are still perhaps some geologists who adhere to a notion once 

 very popular, that there are signs of a universal ocean at a 



after the planet had become the abode of 

 But few will now deny that the proportion 

 of sea and land approached very nearly to that now estab- 

 lished long before the present species of plants and animals 

 had come into beinp-. 



The reader must bear in mind that the lai 



living creatures. 



Tb ^ 



't? 



_ * Buffon, Yol. V. 1755.— Oil the Vir- also Prichard, Phys. Hist, of Manldnd, 

 giuiaii Opossum. vol. i. p. 17, Avhere the hypotheses of 



t *De terra habitabili incremento ; ' different naturalists are enumerated. 



I 



