196 
Wil/is.—Age and Area . 
predictions based upon it and upon it only, of which further examples are 
given below. It is necessary to make once more clear that the success of 
prediction upon so large a scale as has now been effected proves the 
supposition of Age and Area so completely that it can only be displaced by 
finding some other hypothesis that will also explain the facts and make the 
predictions—a thing that no one has as yet attempted. 
The general principle of Age and Area, when once grasped, seems 
almost axiomatic, as I have already pointed out on various occasions, and 
would probably be accepted with little difficulty were it not, among other 
reasons, for the lingering influence of Natural Selection, which has always 
insisted that competition was the chief agent in determining the areas 
occupied. In fact, it has been predicted by two of my supporters, and 
various reviews, letters, and notices have led me to expect the same, that 
within a short time Natural Selection will be quietly dropped, and people will 
say that Age and Area has long been obvious to the meanest intelligence, 
and that there was no need to make such a fuss over a simple axiom. 
Another objection which was strongly urged at Hull was that endemics 
must be regarded as chiefly relics. I have already devoted much attention 
to this point, e. g. in my book, p. 88, but it evidently requires further 
emphasis. People who work in much detail with individual species, and 
come across many which are obviously of relic nature, are apt, more or less 
unconsciously, to exaggerate the number and importance of these cases, 
while they do not properly realize that the number of local species to 
which no stretch of imagination can apply the term relics is enormous. 
There are in Brazil alone 240 local species of Eugenia and 200 of Paepa- 
lanthus , to take merely a couple of genera. Five or six such genera would 
equal the whole number of species that are usually regarded as relics. It 
cannot be made too clear that the relics are outnumbered by about 60 or 70 
to i, so that when dealing with large numbers, as in statistical work, they 
are quite lost in the crowd. The objection is really a single-species objec¬ 
tion in another form. It has been pointed out in the book, e. g. on pp. 94, 
243, that in dealing with such forms from an Age and Area point of view, 
one must obviously include the ‘ fossil ’ area. 
As I pointed out at Hull, no one has attempted to answer the many 
queries that I have propounded upon this subject in (8), p. 349, in the book, 
p. 89, and elsewhere, though one speaker said that time enough (four years) 
had not yet been allowed. If in four years no one can answer one of these 
questions, which could now be multiplied if required to a hundred or more, 
the chance of any serious reply seems but a small one. 
A paper in the July number of the Annals ( 3 ) gives a striking illustra¬ 
tion of the kind of work that will probably mark the next stage in the 
development of Age and Area. There Mr. J. R. Matthews takes the flora 
of Perthshire. At first glance it seems as if it had been distributed quite 
