[AxNALs N. Y. Acad. Sci.. Yol. XXYTI, pp. 1-15. 25 January, 1916] 



SOME REMAEKS UPON MATTHEWS "CLIMATE A^s^D 

 EVOLUTION" ^ 



By T. Bakbour 



WITH SUPPLEMEXTAEY NOTE 

 By W. D. Mattpiew 



[Presented hy title before the Academy, IS December, 1915) 



"Climate and Evolution/' which is really more than its title would 

 imply an essay on the origin and dispersal of vertebrate life, appeared 

 in February, 1915, from the pen of Dr. W. D. Matthew.- It is by far 

 the most scholarly and carefully constructed essay of its kind which has 

 appeared and it demands a careful reading by all who take interest in 

 perhaps the greatest of biological problems — the why and wherefore of 

 the dispersal of animal life as we find it to-day and the past history of 

 present conditions. 



Matthew's thesis, in a few words, is that the permanence of the conti- 

 nents and ocean basins is a surely established fact, that cyclical climatic 

 change has been the principal known cause of the present distribution of 

 land vertebrates, and that this distribution has been effected by successive 

 southward migrations from a holarctic center of dispersion, and that the 

 impetus for these migrations is to be found in the theories of the "Alter- 

 nations of moist and uniform Avith arid and zonal climates, as elaborated 

 by Chamberlin." There is small occasion for me to review or criticise 

 the great bulk of evidence which Matthew has presented, specially where 

 he has dravm upon his profound knowledge of recent and fossil mammals. 

 In the main his contentions are highly convincing, especially where he 

 also draws conclusions from the mammals, a group for which geologic 

 record is adequate in comparison with the fragmentary evidence regard- 

 ing the history of recent birds, recent reptiles and amphibians. With 

 some of these groups, as, for instance, Hylids and Cystignathids, it is 

 hard to rid oneself of the belief that their origin was antarctic and not 

 holarctic, for the northern outpost species seem to be so obviously the 

 depauperate offshoots of the elaborate southern stock. Matthew, however, 

 would argue by analogy with mammalian evidence that these species are 



1 Manuscript received by the Editor 22 October, 1915. 



2 Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci., vol. 24, pp. 171-318. 1915. 



(1) 



