432 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



On a previous occasion, however, he had separated the British Isles 

 into ten districts, according to the distribution of their MoUuscan 

 fauna (33 c). In an endeavour to reduce the number of these districts 

 I en-ed in the opposite dii'ection, in recognising only two, yiz. one, 

 including the south-vrest of England and "^ales with the whole of 

 Ireland and Scotland, and the other, the larger part of England and 

 Wales (76 d). It was only subsequently that I learned that a dis- 

 tinguished French conchologist, Dr. Fischer (31), had also divided the 

 British Islands into two provinces, from a study of their ILolluscan 

 fauna. But his provinces are somewhat different from mine — the 

 south-west of England, "Wales, and the west of Ireland form one ; the 

 remainder of England, Scotland, and the rest of Ireland the other (31, 

 pp. 51-84). An important point, relating to the subject I am about 

 to discuss, is that Dr. Fischer's first province represents in his scheme 

 only part of a larger " Atlantic province " of the European sub-region, 

 •\A liile the second, which includes the greater part of England and 

 Ireland, and the whole of Scotland, is a portion of his " Germanic 

 province." 



Anotlier division of the British Islands into two districts has been 

 proposed by Mr. Jordan (44, pp. 45-52). Both are portions of his 

 large Germanic sub-region of the Holarctic region. One of them 

 includes Scotland and the north of Ireland, the other the remainder 

 of Ireland, England, and Wales. The latter province forms only 

 part of a larger "Celtic district" to whicli belong also Holland, 

 Belgium, North, Central, and South-west France. 



In describing the collections illustrating the geographical distribu- 

 tion of animals in the Dublin Natural History Museum, Mr. Carpenter 

 referred to the fact that he had, in one of the cases, roughly grouped 

 the animals of the British fauna in thi'ee divisions, i.e., those with a 

 wide range over the British Islands, those characteristic of the south- 

 eastern and lowland districts of Great Britain (which he calls the 

 " Teutonic Fauna"), and those characteristic of Ireland, and of the 

 western and highland parts of Great Britain. The animals of the latter 

 division he has tenned the " Celtic Fauna" (16 r/, p. 117). He recog- 

 nized more recently that it contained two distinct groups of animals, 

 one including those of northern and the other those of southern origin 

 (16 h, p. 215). Lastly, Dr. Kobelt, in a short paper on the Distribu- 

 tion of the British Mollusca, expresses the opinion that the British 

 fauna takes its origin from various sources, and that there are probably 

 more than three distinct groups (52, p. 83). 



The significance of these facts has been greatly minimized by the 



