130 



MEDITERRANEAN PROVINCE. 



by Ed. Forbes, produced not only a detailed local 

 fauna, but showed that it admitted of definite 

 bathy metrical distribution, and that marine animals 

 have their zones of depth, just as plants have their 

 regions of altitude. The bearing of these re- 

 searches on the special investigations of the geolo- 

 gist have hardly yet been fully appreciated. The 

 Mediterranean islands have not been passed over. 

 Mac Andrew has reported on the Balearic group; 

 Payraudeau on Corsica. Sicily and the coasts of 

 southern Italy have been illustrated by the ad- 

 mirable works of Delle Chiaje, Poli, Cantraine, and 

 Philippi. The Molluscous fauna of the Algerian 

 seas, which may be taken as a type of the North 

 African coasts, has been described by Deshayes. 



The Eastern Mediterranean carries our retrospect 

 to earlier labours. "This sea," says Ed. Forbes, 

 " which furnished Aristotle with the subjects of so 

 many of his admirable researches, is of no slight 

 interest to the student of marine zoology. In the 

 writings of the great founder of Natural History 

 Science there are allusions to its shores which 

 prove that he drew from them part of his informa- 

 tion ; it is consequently classic ground to the 

 naturalist as well as to the scholar." 



Though the character of the Mediterranean 

 fauna be not distinctive, it is yet so far peculiar 

 that the assemblage of forms which may be there 

 met with will be found as a whole to be more 

 typically Lusitaman than any from the Atlantic 



