Animal Geography, 
1877.] 
47 
walls are built exclusively of ordinary brickwork, in the 
same manner as those of the North Sea locks. 
It will thus be seen that, although the canal itself is 
shorter, the works on it are considerably more important 
than anything that occurs on the Suez Canal. The 
“ Orange Locks ” were opened by the King of Holland in 
1872, and the completed canal was opened by His Majesty 
on the 1st of November last, when he ordered that it should 
be known by the name of “ The Port of Ymuiden.” The 
total cost of this stupendous work has been about two 
millions sterling. 
IV. ANIMAL GEOGRAPHY* 
NE of the most striking distinctions between the old 
and the new school of Natural History is the greatly 
increased amount of attention paid in the present 
day to the locality of every species. Our predecessors, if 
any specimen had not been derived from their own country, 
quietly dubbed it “ exotic.” Any creature from a tropical 
climate was labelled as a native of “ the Indies,” — which 
might include either Venezuela, Hindustan, or New Guinea. 
To the modern naturalist, on the contrary, an accurate 
knowledge of the locality of every specimen he examines is 
a point of the first moment. Without this he regards it in 
much the same manner as a lawyer looks upon an unsigned 
document. “ The structure, affinities, and habits of a spe 
cies now form only a part of its natural history. We 
require also to know its exadt range at the present day and 
in pre-historic times, and to have some knowledge of its 
geological age, the place of its first appearance upon the 
globe, and of the various extindt forms most nearly allied 
to it.” 
But though the correct locality of each species is now 
recorded in every systematic work on natural history, though 
local faunae have been compiled, and attempts made at a 
general classification of the animal world from a geographical 
point of view, a work was still wanting which should com- 
* The Geographical Distribution of Animals, with a Study of the Relations 
of Living and Extindl Faunas as elucidating the Past Changes of the Earth’s 
Surface. By Alfred Russel Wallace. London : Macmillan and Co. 
Opening Address of the Biological Section of the British Association, 1876. 
By the President, Alfred Russel Wallace, 
