Wallace's Geographical Distribution of Animals

Abstract

THE question of the number and boundaries of the JL primary zoological regions of the Globe lias recently been discussed by Prof. Newton in his article on “Birds” in the new edition of the “Encyclopaedia Britannica,” After remarks on the failure of previous writers to solve this problem in a satisfactory manner, Prof. Newton, comes to the conclusion that the outlines of distribution laid down in 1857 by Mr. Sclater, although founded only upon the study of the erratic class of birds, have c not merely in the main, but to a very great extent in detail, met with the approval of nearly all those zoologists who have since studied the subject in its bearing upon the particular classes in the knowledge of which they themselves stand pre-eminent.” In point of fact, Mr. Wallace himself was one of the first naturalists to accept Mr. Sclater's views on this subject. Writing from the remote island of Batchian, in the Indian Archipelago, in March 1859, after perusing Mr. Sclater's well-known memoir on the Geographical Distribution of Birds,¹ Mr. Wallace says, in a letter to Mr. Sclater published in the first volume of the Ibis “With your division of the earth into six grand zoological provinces I perfectly agree, and I believe they will be confirmed by every other department of zoology as well as by botany. In the two excellent volumes now before us, in which are embodied the results of several years continuous labour upon this and kindred branches of the same subject, it will be seen that Mr. Wallace has not altered his opinion. The six great primary zoological regions of the globe proposed by Mr. Sclater in 1857 are fully adopted, and form the basis of Mr. Wallace's whole treatment of the subject. But one slight change even in their nomenclature is made—that of substituting “Oriental” as the name of the Region embracing South Asia and the adjacent islands for Mr. Sclater's term “Indian.” In fact, after discussing the general principles and phenomena of distribution and what little we as yet know concerning the distribution of extinct animals, the main portion of Mr. Wallace's volumes is occupied by an elaborate sermon on Mr. Sclater's text, and on its application to other classes of animals. The various phenomena of life exhibited in the Palaearctic, Ethiopian, Oriental, Australian, Neotropical, and Nearctic regions are treated of in succession, and their similarities and their differences are discussed. To this is added a sketch of the geographical distribution of the principal families of terrestrial animals arranged systematically, which forms the fourth part of this important work. Of this last portion, which is, in fact, a book of reference containing an account of the distribution of all the families, and of most of the genera of the higher animals arranged in systematic order, we propose to speak in a subsequent article. For the present we will confine our attention to the first three parts of Mr. Wallace's work.

The Geographical Distribution of Animals, with a Study of the Living and Extinct Faunas, as Elucidating the Past Changes of the Earth's Surface.

By Alfred Russel Wallace. Two Vols. 8vo. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1876.)