ZOOLOGICAL RING FENCES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10037, 25 January 1896, Page 2 (Supplement)

ZOOLOGICAL RING FENCES.

The aim of the geologist is to reconstruct the past history of the gloho. Out of the scanty evidence that is vouchsafed to him in the shape of fossils, the various stratifications of tho earth's crust and the relative positions of land and water now and in the past, in time he may be able to sketch out for us something like a panorama of the vast, slow-moving changes that tho surface of this poor, worn old planot has seen. Most interesting of all, no doubt, would bo the strange history of tilio plants and animals which have successively appeared and disappeared on the terrestrial stage. Dr. Roberts, in his lecture at Langiiam Place, London, on Deo. 1, gave a popular explanation of one method of research adopted by the goologists of which the lay public know very little. This consists in studying the areas in which modern plants and animals are distributed. It has been discovered that tho whole world may bo partitioned up into certain zoological areas, the species living in which are peculiar to those areas and are not found in other areas, evon though they be neighbouring. Similar animals may exist in the other areas, but they are only "representative." Thus, tako the cats. In what is called the African region the biggest cat is tho lion. But in the Indian region there are no lions. Here the big cat is the tiger. And in the South American region tliero are neither lions or tigers. Tho big cab here is the jaguar. Again, the camel (confined to the Old tVorld) is represented by the lama in the New World. Further, in Australia thore aro practically no mammals and, therefore, no caruivora, Bub it is the headquarters of animals of the kangaroo type and tho inonotremes— which are scarcely represented at all in the rest of tho world. And yet cross a deep-sea channol in the direction of Malay, only a few miles wide, and yon are in a region whero all tho animals are European. Now, we cannot imagine that there were special creations of animals for each of these sharply inarkedregions. Science has long made good the belief that all existing life forms are but modified descendants of earlier forms; that genus and species have boen chopped and change:! about, improved and altered to suit the over-changing condition of the earth's surface. What, then, do these poculiar areas indicate? Plainly regions that earlier or later have beon fenced off from each other by natural barriers, impassable by bird or beast, such as the ocean or high mountain ranges. In those aroas natural'aoleotlon" has operated as if within a ring fonce. The strongest proof of this remarkable theory is thitt the boundaries of the great zoological areas are found to be identical with such barriers. Thus tho Groat Sahara Desert separates the African from the European area, tho Himalayan range separates Indian animal life from that of Asia above it, and the deep-sea channol near the Island of Lombok shuts off Australia from the Asian Continent. Neither climate, nor soil, nor any natural surroundings will account for those strango zoological differences. How important all this evidence is to tho geologist will appear on the slightest reflection. Not only can he judge of the probable position of land masses in the past, but can form some notion of the order in which their severance by the sea took placet