Abstract
(concluded from page 172)
FRANCE, without any special endemic charae'er, unites within her limits portions of several biological region;, thus requiring from her naturalists the study of all the European Floras and Faunas in order rightly to understand her own. The greater part of her surface constitutes the western extremity of that great Russo-European tract I have above commented upon, its flora, and probably also its fauna, here blending with the West European type, which spreads more or less over it from the Iberian peninsula. To the south-east she has an end of the Swiss Alps, connected to a certain degree with the Pyrenees to the south-west by the chain of the Cevennes, but at an elevation too low, and which has probably always been too low, for the interchange of the truly alpine forms of those two lofty ranges. South of the Cevennes she includes a portion of the great Mediterranean region; and the marine productions of her coasts are those of three different aquatic regions-the North Sea, the Atlantic, and the Mediterranean. The few endemic or local races she may possess appear to be on those southern declivities which bound the Mediterranean region; and if the volcanic elevations of Central France have a special interest, it is more from the absence of many species common at similar altitudes in the mouutains to the east or to the south-west, than from the presence of peculiar races not of the lowest grades, with the exception, perhaps, of a very few species now rare, and which may prove to be the lingering remains of expiring races.
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Mr. Bentham's Anniversary Address to the Linnean Society . Nature 4, 192–194 (1871). https://doi.org/10.1038/004192a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/004192a0