FIELD AND FOREST. 69 



Wallace's Geographical Distribution of Animals. 



The following review of Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace's recent book 

 on "The Geographical Distribution of Animals, with a study of' the 

 relations of living and extinct faunas, as elucidating the past changes 

 of the earth's surface" — a work which has attracted considerable at- 

 tention both in this country and Europe — is from the pen of Prof. 

 Theodore Gill, and is reprinted from The Nation by permission of 

 the publishers of that journal and of the author. — -Editor. 



It is Buffan who is to be credited with having first promulgated pre- 

 cise generalizations respecting the geographical distribution of ani- 

 mals. Buffon, in this respect, not only advanced much beyond his 

 predecessors, but leaped at once to a position which some of the 

 more pretentious naturalists of our own times have failed to attain. 

 In brief, he recognized (i) that the inhabitants of the tropical and 

 southern portions of the old and new worlds were entirely different 

 from each other; (2) that those of the northern portions of the two were 

 to a considerable extent, identical; and (3) that the confluence of the 

 two was most apparent towards the proximate portions of America and 

 Asia. The truth that animals in fact had, for the most part, originated 

 in the regions of the earth where they are now found, became incon- 

 trovertible ; and geological research demonstrated that they were pre- 

 ceded by forms which were the ancestors of those now living on the 

 soil. Numerous zoologists, from time to time, took up the problem 

 of the distribution of animals as a special study. At length an E ig- 

 lish ornithologist, Mr. P. L. Sclater, in 1857, published a memoir, to 

 which adventitious circumstances gave considerable celebrity, and 

 in which the formerly recognized regions were redefined under new 

 but by no means appropriate names. (t) The European region was 

 christened Palaearctic ; (2) the African or Ethiopian, the Western 

 Paloeotropical ; (3) the Indian, the Middle Palaeotropical ; (4) the 

 Australian, the Eastern Palseotropical ; (5) the North American, the 

 Nearctic, and (6) the tropical American, the Neotropical. These regions 

 were contrasted, as implied in their nomenclature, under two prime 

 categories — the Palaeogean and Neogean, corresponding respectively 

 with the old and new worlds of geographers. The limitations of the 

 regions were, for the most part, judiciously adopted by the author from 

 his predecessors, although without any acknowledgment and with a 



