128 



MEDITERRANEAN PROVINCE. 



receive such illustration as to make the Mediter- 

 ranean basin and its contents more suggestive to 

 the naturalist and the geologist than any other sea 

 with which we are as yet acquainted. It is to such 

 consideratioDs as these that the present chapter 

 will be mainly devoted. 



It will doubtless be a difficult matter with some 

 naturalists to divest themselves so entirely of old 

 prepossessions as to regard the fauna of this great 

 internal sea merely as a subordinate and derivative 

 one ; such, however, it essentially is, and if we 

 have heretofore viewed it otherwise, it has been 

 owing doubtless to the circumstance that it has 

 been so long known. It was on this account that 

 with the rise of the present school of natural 

 history investigation it became a typical region — 

 one to which reference was constantly made in all 

 questions relating to the geographical distribution 

 of European forms. Cuvier and Valenciennes, in 

 their great work on Fishes, Deshayes, with respect 

 to Molluscs, habitually speak of certain forms as 

 ranging from the Mediterranean over a given re- 

 gion without, and so also with many others. This 

 practice will probably be continued, nor will it be 

 attended with any inconvenience, provided the ex- 

 pression does not mislead and induce the impression 

 that the direction which an integral portion of the 

 great Atlantic fauna has taken in its diffusion, was 

 outwards from the Mediterranean, whereas it was 

 the reverse. 



