Abstract
THE majority of treatises upon geographical distribution have used as facts and framed their conclusions upon the range of vertebrated animals only. A few manuals, such as M. Trouessart's excellent book, and Mr. Beddard's “Text-book of Zoogeography” in the Cambridge series of scientific handbooks, have attempted a rather wider survey of the facts of the science, the necessity for which is emphasised by the short essay now before us. The main object of the science of geographical distribution is clearly, we take it, to state the facts; but it is illogical to avail oneself merely of a selected series of facts. This is particularly evident in view of another aspect of the science; for some of its more important inferences deal with the former changes in the relative position of oceans and continents. Birds and mammals being comparatively modern creations, can throw no light upon more distant changes of this kind; and facts drawn from those groups are by no means sufficient to serve as a basis for the view, now so generally becoming accepted, that there was in earlier times a vaster antarctic continent than the shrunken remnant now existing. Dr. Stoll strongly supports this notion, and it is from invertebrate groups that arguments are to be drawn. He is, moreover, against the theory of polar dispersal, which by its ingenuity, if for no other reason, has commanded much attention. Dr. Stoll clearly shows the importance of a consideration of invertebrates in discussing the inferences of geographical distribution, and we could have wished that his little brochure of only 113 pages had been more expanded.
Zur Zoogeographie der landbewohnenden Wirbellosen.
Von Dr. Otto Stoll. Pp. 113. (Berlin: Friedländer, 1897.)
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Zur Zoogeographie der landbewohnenden Wirbellosen. Nature 56, 247 (1897). https://doi.org/10.1038/056247b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/056247b0