FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41  
42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   >>   >|  
iods alternately wet and dry, and of the important part which they have played in distribution. I wrote to Forel (392/3. See Letter 388.), who is always at work on ants, and told him your views about the dispersal of the blind coleoptera, and asked him to observe. I spoke to Hooker about your book, and feel sure that he would like nothing better than to consider the distribution of plants in relation to your views; but he seemed to doubt whether he should ever have time. And now I have done my jottings, and once again congratulate you on having brought out so grand a work. I have been a little disappointed at the review in "Nature." (392/4. June 22nd, 1876, pages 165 et seq.) LETTER 393. A.R. WALLACE TO CHARLES DARWIN. Rosehill, Dorking, July 23rd, 1876. I should have replied sooner to your last kind and interesting letters, but they reached me in the midst of my packing previous to removal here, and I have only just now got my books and papers in a get-at-able state. And first, many thanks for your close observation in detecting the two absurd mistakes in the tabular headings. As to the former greater distinction of the North and South American faunas, I think I am right. The edentata being proved (as I hold) to have been mere temporary migrants into North America in the post-Pliocene epoch, form no part of its Tertiary fauna. Yet in South America they were so enormously developed in the Pliocene epoch that we know, if there is any such thing as evolution, etc., that strange ancestral forms must have preceded them in Miocene times. Mastodon, on the other hand, represented by one or two species only, appears to have been a late immigrant into South America from the north. The immense development of ungulates (in varied families, genera, and species) in North America during the whole Tertiary epoch is, however, the great feature which assimilates it to Europe, and contrasts it with South America. True camels, hosts of hog-like animals, true rhinoceroses, and hosts of ancestral horses, all bring the North American [fauna] much nearer to the Old World than it is now. Even the horse, represented in all South America by Equus only, was probably a temporary immigrant from the north. As to extending too far the principle (yours) of the necessity of comparatively large areas for the development of varied faunas, I may have done so, but I think not. There is, I think, every probability that most islands, e
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41  
42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
America
 

Tertiary

 

development

 

varied

 

ancestral

 

immigrant

 
faunas
 

American

 

temporary

 

represented


Pliocene

 

distribution

 

species

 

edentata

 
preceded
 

Miocene

 

Mastodon

 

strange

 

developed

 

proved


migrants
 

evolution

 

enormously

 
extending
 
principle
 

necessity

 

probability

 

islands

 

comparatively

 

nearer


genera

 

feature

 

families

 

ungulates

 

appears

 

immense

 

assimilates

 
Europe
 

rhinoceroses

 

horses


animals

 

contrasts

 
camels
 
jottings
 

relation

 

plants

 
disappointed
 

review

 
Nature
 

congratulate