CH. i] LOCALITY AND STATION. 5 



found in another. The same thing holds true of other 

 groups ; the badger, for example, will be found in one wood 

 but will be absent from another; nevertheless generally 

 speaking this animal may be said to inhabit the greater 

 part of England, not to mention foreign regions in which 

 it is also found. Were we to put together all that has 

 been recorded of the range of this or any other animal 

 and colour a map of England in correspondence with those 

 facts, we should find that a large map would be coloured 

 by a series of closely set but separate patches of colour ; 

 on the other hand a small map would practically have to 

 be coloured all over to indicate the range of the animal. 

 The reason for this is that the badger can only live in 

 certain kinds of country. It is not at home for instance 

 in bare chalky downs or on the tops of high mountains ; it 

 prefers woods and the immediate neighbourhood of woods. 



Locality and Station. 



We must carefully distinguish between locality and 

 station. While the area inhabited by a species is usually 

 continuous, it by no means always happens that the station 

 consists of one continuous tract. Animals inhabiting 

 forests or moorland or pools are only found where the 

 suitable circumstances occur. But in such instances the 

 habitat of the animal may be wide, only broken up into a 

 series of stations. We should not regard a case of this 

 kind as one of discontinuous distribution. Often however 

 the local phenomena of distribution have not so clear an 

 interpretation. Every entomologist is aware of the often 



