No. 548] 



NOTES AND LITERATURE 



501 



tion "Did animals survive the ice age?" is first mooted and 

 Scharff prepares us for what is perhaps the most welcome and 

 far-reaching opinion which he, we think successfully, endeavors 

 to prove. His belief is that we have been accustomed to en- 

 tirely misjudge the extent and importance of the glacial epoch 

 and to exaggerate excessively the part which it has plnycd in 

 influencing the distribution of our present flora and fauna. In 

 this the. reviewer heartily agrees and recalls that in Percival 

 Lowell's "Evolution of Worlds" the question is attacked from an 

 entirely different standpoint and a similar conclusion reached. 

 Scharff concludes that "The prevalent geological opinions as to 

 the nature of the Ice Age thus dominate all biological thought 

 in reference to problems of distribution." If we emancipate 

 ourselves from these preconceived notions in our speculations 

 on the origin (for example) of the existing fresh-water mussel 

 fauna, we must arrive at different conclusions. 



In Chapter II, then, we have discussed the general features 

 of the fauna of northeastern North America with special refer- 

 ence to this theory of a comparatively insignificant Ice Age. 



The third chapter deals with the animals of the Canadian 

 northwest. Ptarmigans, lemmings and gophers, the bison, 

 wapiti deer, our tree porcupine, etc., are discussed and their 

 origin pointed out. There is, however, no reason for conclud- 

 ing, as Scharff does, that the American magpie is more similar 

 to the European form than the Asiatic. All these palagarctic 

 races of magpies are so closely related and the differences be- 

 tween them are so slight as not to permit of any such conclu- 

 sions as Scharff draws from them. The other chapters on North 

 America deal with the fauna of the Kocky Mountains, the ani- 

 mals of the eastern states, the fauna of the Continental basin 

 and* of the southeastern states and Bermuda. In this chapter 

 we meet again with an opinion which, while it can not but gain 

 ground as time goes on, now seems radical in the extreme. Ber- 

 muda has always been considered a most typical "oceanic is- 

 *and," yet here we have the view advanced, and well defended, 

 that Bermuda is the remnant of an ancient belt of land which 

 joined it to a southern land mass extending across the Atlantic 

 Ocean. This would account for the presence of both European 

 and American elements in the indigenous fauna, one which, 

 as Scharff shows, is composed wholly of types bearing "the im- 

 press of vast antiquity." 



In the following chapter (No. IX) we have more detailed dis- 



