| Transcriber's note: | The Errata (after the List of Plates) have been worked into the main text and appear like this. All other apparent mistakes have been retained as printed. |
THE GEOGRAPHICAL
DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMALS
WITH A STUDY OF
THE RELATIONS OF LIVING AND EXTINCT FAUNAS
AS ELUCIDATING THE
PAST CHANGES OF THE EARTH'S SURFACE.
BY
ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE,
AUTHOR OF "THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO," ETC.
WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
IN TWO VOLUMES.—VOLUME I.
London:
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1876.
[The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved.]
LONDON:
R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS,
BREAD STREET HILL.
PREFACE.
The present work is an attempt to collect and summarize the existing information on the Distribution of Land Animals; and to explain the more remarkable and interesting of the facts, by means of established laws of physical and organic change.
The main idea, which is here worked out in some detail for the whole earth, was stated sixteen years ago in the concluding pages of a paper on the "Zoological Geography of the Malay Archipelago," which appeared in the Journal of Proceedings of the Linnean Society for 1860; and again, in a paper read before the Royal Geographical Society in 1863, it was briefly summarized in the following passage:—
"My object has been to show the important bearing of researches into the natural history of every part of the world, upon the study of its past history. An accurate knowledge of any groups of birds or of insects and of their geographical distribution, may enable us to map out the islands and continents of a former epoch,—the amount of difference that exists between the animals of adjacent districts being closely related to preceding geological changes. By the collection of such minute facts, alone, can we hope to fill up a great gap in the past history of the earth as revealed by geology, and obtain some indications of the existence of those ancient lands which now lie buried beneath the ocean, and have left us nothing but these living records of their former existence."
The detailed study of several groups of the birds and insects collected by myself in the East, brought prominently before me some of the curious problems of Geographical Distribution; but I s