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Australian forms are rapidly sowing themselves and becoming naturalised. Before the last great Glacial period, no doubt the intertropical mountains were stocked with endemic Alpine forms; but these have almost everywhere yielded to the more dominant forms generated in the larger areas and more efficient workshops of the north. In many islands the native produstions are nearly equalled, or even outnumbered, by those which have become naturalised; and this is the first stage towards their extinction. Mountains are islands on the land, and their inhabitants have yielded to those produced within the larger areas of the north, just in the same way as the inhabitants of real islands have everywhere yielded and are still yielding to continental forms naturalised through man's agency.

The same principles apply to the distribution of terrestrial animals and of marine productions, in the northern and southern temperate zones, and on the intertropical mountains. When, during the height of the Glacial period, the ocean-currents were widely different to what they now are, some of the inhabitants of the temperate seas might have reached the equator; of these a few would perhaps at once be able to migrate southward, by keeping to the cooler currents, whilst others might remain and survive in the colder depths until the southern hemisphere was in its turn subjected to a glacial climate and permitted their further progress; in nearly the same manner as, according to Forbes, isolated spaces inhabited by Arctic productions exist to the present day in the deeper parts of the northern temperate seas.

I am far from supposing that all the difficulties in regard to the distribution and affinities of the identical

and allied species, which now live so widely separated in the north and south, and sometimes on the intermediate mountain-ranges, are removed on the views above given. The exact lines of migration cannot be indicated. We cannot say why certain species and not others have migrated; why certain species have been modified and have given rise to new forms, whilst others have remained unaltered. We cannot hope to explain such facts, until we can say why one species and not another becomes naturalised by man's agency in a foreign land; why one species ranges twice or thrice as far, and is twice or thrice as common, as another species within their own homes.

Various special difficulties also remain to be solved; for instance, the occurrence, as shown by Dr. Hooker, of the same plants at points so enormously remote as Kerguelen Land, New Zealand, and Fuegia; but icebergs, as suggested by Lyell, may have been concerned in their dispersal. The existence at these and other distant points of the southern hemisphere, of species, which, though distinct, belong to genera exclusively confined to the south, is a more remarkable case. Some of these species are so distinct, that we cannot suppose that there has been time since the commencement of the last Glacial period for their migration and subsequent modification to the necessary degree. The facts seem to indicate that distinct species belonging to the same genera have migrated in radiating lines from a common centre; and I am inclined to look in the southern, as in the northern hemisphere, to a former and warmer period, before the commencement of the last Glacial period, when the Antarctic lands, now covered with ice, supported a highly peculiar and isolated flora. It may

be suspected that before this flora was exterminated during the last Glacial epoch, a few forms had been already widely dispersed to various points of the southern hemisphere by occasional means of transport, and by the aid as halting-places, of now sunken islands. Thus the southern shores of America, Australia, and New Zealand may have become slightly tinted by the same peculiar forms of life.

Sir C. Lyell in a striking passage has speculated, in language almost identical with mine, on the effects of great alterations of climate throughout the world on geographical distribution. And we have now seen that Mr. Croll's conclusion that successive Glacial periods in the one hemisphere coincide with warmer periods in the opposite hemisphere, together with the admission of the slow modification of species, explains a multitude of facts in the distribution of the same and of the allied forms of life in all parts of the globe. The living waters have flowed during one period from the north and during another from the south, and in both cases have reached the equator; but the stream of life has flowed with greater force from the north than in the opposite direction, and has consequently more freely inundated the south. As the tide leaves its drift, in horizontal lines, rising higher on the shores where the tide rises highest, so have the living waters left their living drift on our mountain summits, in a line gently rising from the Arctic lowlands to a great altitude under the equator. The various beings thus left stranded may be compared with savage races of man, driven up and surviving in the mountain fastnesses of almost every land, which serves as a record, full of interest to us, of the former inhabitants of the surrounding lowlands.

CHAPTER XIII.

GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION-continued.

Distribution of fresh-water productions-On the inhabitants of oceanic islands-Absence of Batrachians and of terrestrial Mammals-On the relation of the inhabitants of islands to those of the nearest mainland-On colonisation from the nearest source with subsequent modification-Summary of the last and present chapter.

Fresh-water Productions.

As lakes and river-systems are separated from each other by barriers of land, it might have been thought that fresh-water productions would not have ranged widely within the same country, and as the sea is apparently a still more formidable barrier, that they would never have extended to distant countries. But the case is exactly the reverse. Not only have many freshwater species, belonging to different classes, an enormous range, but allied species prevail in a remarkable manner throughout the world. When first collecting in the fresh waters of Brazil, I well remember feeling much surprise at the similarity of the fresh-water insects, shells, &c., and at the dissimilarity of the surrounding terrestrial beings, compared with those of Britain.

But the wide ranging power of fresh-water productions can, I think, in most cases be explained by their having become fitted, in a manner highly useful to

them, for short and frequent migrations from pond to pond, or from stream to stream, within their own countries; and liability to wide dispersal would follow from this capacity as an almost necessary consequence. We can here consider only a few cases; of these, some of the most difficult to explain are presented by fish. It was formerly believed that the same fresh-water species never existed on two continents distant from each other. But Dr. Günther has lately shown that the Galaxias attenuatus inhabits Tasmania, New Zealand, the Falkland Islands, and the mainland of South America. This is a wonderful case, and probably indicates dispersal from an Antarctic centre during a former warm period. This case, however, is rendered in some degree less surprising by the species of this genus having the power of crossing by some unknown means considerable spaces of open ocean: thus there is one species common to New Zealand and to the Auckland Islands, though separated by a distance of about 230 miles. On the same continent fresh-water fish often range widely, and as if capriciously; for in two adjoining river-systems some of the species may be the same, and some wholly different.

It is probable that they are occasionally transported by what may be called accidental means. Thus fishes still alive are not very rarely dropped at distant points by whirlwinds; and it is known that the ova retain their vitality for a considerable time after removal from the water. Their dispersal may, however, be mainly attributed to changes in the level of the land within the recent period, causing rivers to flow into each other. Instances, also, could be given of this having occurred during floods, without any change of level. The wide difference of the fish on the opposite sides of most

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