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Alfred Russel Wallace : Alfred Wallace : A. R. Wallace :
Russel Wallace : Alfred Russell Wallace (sic)

 
 
Note on Biogeography (S680b: 1909)

 
Editor Charles H. Smith's Note: A footnote Wallace supplied for two centenary printings of early sketches on natural selection by Charles Darwin (The Foundations of the Origin of Species, A Sketch Written in 1842, and The Foundations of the Origin of Species; Two Essays Written in 1842 and 1844). Wallace's footnote appeared on page 30 of each work. Included below is the section of the text Wallace commented on. To link directly to this page, connect with: http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/S680B.htm


. . . Thus great chains of mountains, spaces of sea between islands and continents, even great rivers and deserts. In fact the amount (of) difference in the organisms bears a certain, but not invariable relation to the amount of physical difficulties to transit.

    There are some curious exceptions, namely, similarity of fauna of mountains of Europe and N. America and Lapland. Other cases just (the) reverse, mountains of eastern S. America, Altai (?), S. India (?)1: mountain summits of islands often eminently peculiar. Fauna generally of some islands, even when close, very dissimilar, in others very similar. I am here led to observe one or more centres of creation. . . .


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    1 Note by Mr. A. R. Wallace. "The want of similarity referred to, is, between the mountains of Brazil and Guiana and those of the Andes. Also those of the Indian peninsula as compared with the Himalayas. In both cases there is continuous intervening land.

    "The islands referred to were, no doubt, the Galapagos for dissimilarity from S. America; our own Islands as compared with Europe, and perhaps Java, for similarity with continental Asia."


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