THE ENTOMOLOGISTS 
WEEKLY INTELLIGENCER. 
No. 196.] SATURDAY, JULY 7, 1860 [Pkice \d. 
ZOOLOGICAL AREAS. 
At a recent meeting of the Linnean 
Society a paper was read by Mr. Lub- 
bock, descriptive of some new Ento- 
mostraca collected in the Atlantic and 
Pacific Oceans by Captain Toynbee. 
In the discussion which followed 
this paper, Mr. Busk made some re- 
marks on the geographical range of 
the various maritime animals, and 
wished to know whether the provinces 
of some of them were not rather 
clearly defined. The reply was that 
at present our knowdedge of the ocean 
fauna was so restricted that new spe- 
cies of Entomostraca were continually 
being met with, and that the geo- 
graphical range of the known species 
was not yet ascertained with any great 
degree of accuracy. 
We confess we felt a cold shudder 
when Mr. Busk propounded his en- 
quiry, for we had been lately reading 
the debate on the abstruseness of the 
questions put before the candidates 
at competitive examinations for the 
civil service, and it at once occurred 
to us that it was only a question of 
time as to when an examiner in 
Zoology should propound the following 
query: — 
“The accompanying bottle of salt 
tvater contains a number of marine 
animals; have the goodness to state 
the latitude and longitude of the vessel 
at the time these animals were col- 
lected ? ” 
If it be imagined that some of 
the smaller marine animals occupy 
only belts of the ocean, some belts 
parallel to the equator, and others belts 
at various degrees of inclination, — some 
belts of fifty or sixty miles in width, 
and others belts not exceeding a mile 
in width,— it is evident that the areas 
iu which a great number of these belts 
intersect must be of very small extent, 
and that consequently by finding some 
fifty or sixty species in a bottle of 
water, which would naturally only occur 
together on one spot of the globe, the 
geographical position of that spot might 
be ascertained. 
It may be fifty years yet before 
Zoology arrives at this point; but 
Science is always progressive, and the 
most visionary dreams of one century 
become the common facts of the next. 
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