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A reprint of a classical work in the Cambridge Library Collection.
Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) was a British biologist and explorer whose theories of evolution, arrived at independently, caused Darwin to allow their famous joint paper to go forward to the Linnean Society in 1858. Considered the nineteenth century's leading expert on the geographical distribution of animals, Wallace carried out extensive fieldwork in areas as diverse as North and South America, Africa, China, India and Australia to document the habitats, breeding, migration and feeding behaviour of thousands of species around the world, and the influence of environmental conditions on their survival. First published in 1876, this two-volume set presents Wallace's findings, and represents a landmark in the study of zoology, evolutionary biology and palaeontology which remains relevant to scholars in these fields today.
Volume 1 focuses on the classification of species, migration processes, factors influencing extinction, and the characteristics of a range of zoological regions worldwide.
Preface
Part I. The Principles and General Phenomena of Distribution
1. Introductory
2. The means of dispersal and the migration of animals
3. Distribution as affected by the conditions and changes of the earth's surface
4. On zoological regions
5. Classification as affecting the study of geographical distribution
Part II. On the Distribution of Extinct Animals
6. The extinct mammalia of the Old World
7. Extinct mammalia of the New World
8. Various extinct animals - and on the antiquity of the genera of insects and land-mollusca
Part III. Zoological Geography: A Review of the Chief Forms of Life in the Several Regions and Sub-Regions, with the Indications They Afford of Geographical Mutations
9. The order of succession of the region. Cosmopolitan groups of animals. Tables of distribution
10. The Palaearctic region
11. The Ethiopian region
12. The Oriental region
13. The Australian region
Index
