EVIDENCES FROM GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION IOL 
If the environment in a region adjoining a range should change in a 
favourable manner, the range might be extended at that point without 
any alteration on the part of the animals. 
“The distribution of animals is inferred to be in harmony with this 
method, which involves, it will be noted, the factors of migration, 
evolution, physiological and morphological dependence upon the 
environment, the diversity and changeableness of the earth’s surface, 
and extinction; and in this manner are explained the differences in 
geographical position, differences in size of range, differences in the 
continuity of range and the fact that ranges are at first continuous, 
differences in physical and biological conditions which characterize 
the ranges of different forms, and the geographical proximity of 
apparently related forms.” 
SOME OF THE MORE SIGNIFICANT FACTS ABOUT THE 
DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMALS 
THE FAUNA OF OCEANIC ISLANDS! 
GEORGE JOHN ROMANES 
Turning now from aquatic organisms to terrestrial, the body of 
facts from which to draw is so large, that I think the space at my dis- 
posal may be best utilized by confining attention to a single division 
of them—that, namely, which is furnished by the zodlogical study of 
oceanic islands. 
In the comparatively limited—but in itself extensive—class of 
facts thus presented, we have a particularly fair and cogent test as 
between the alternative theories of evolution and creation. For 
where we meet with a volcanic island, hundreds of miles from any 
other Jand, and rising abruptly from an ocean of enormous depth, we 
may be quite sure that such an island can never have formed part of a 
now submerged continent. In other words, we may be quite sure that 
it always has been what it now is—an oceanic peak, separated from all 
other land by hundreds of miles of sea, and therefore an area supplied 
by nature for the purpose, as it were, of testing the rival theories of 
creation and evolution. For, let us ask, upon these tiny insular 
specks of Jand what kind of life should we expect to find? To this 
question the theories of special creation and of gradual evolution 
would agree in giving the same answer up to a certain point. For 
both theories would agree in supposing that these islands would, at all 
1 From G. J. Romanes, Darwin and after Darwin (copyright 1892). Used by 
special permission of The Open Court Publishing Company. 
