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CHAPTER VI. 



MEDITERRANEAN PROVINCE. 



It has already been intimated (p. 16) that the 

 Mediterranean is not entitled to take rank as an 

 independent marine province in respect of any very 

 definite assemblage of original forms which have 

 seemingly been called into being there ; yet the 

 interest attaching to this area, viewed zoologically, 

 is so varied as will ever require that it should 

 receive separate and special notice in the Natural 

 History of the European Seas. There are its well- 

 defined limits, the richness of the assemblage of 

 forms which it contains, the extent to which from 

 early times these forms have been collected and 

 described, the ready access we have to a large 

 portion of its coast-line, together with the facilities 

 which its tranquil waters offer for the investigations 

 of the naturalist. Again, with reference to the 

 past, the genealogy of a vast number of forms, or 

 the relation of the present fauna to a former one, 

 the directions and extent to which the migratory 

 movements of large assemblages of marine animals 

 have taken place there, the modifications which 

 certain forms have experienced in the course of 

 such changes, are all of them points which there 



