[1] A small number of species belonging to the West Indies are found in the extreme southern portion of the Florida Peninsula.
[2] I cannot avoid here referring to the enormous waste of labour and money with comparatively scanty and unimportant results to natural history of most of the great scientific voyages of the various civilized governments during the present century. All these expeditions combined have done far less than private collectors in making known the products of remote lands and islands. They have brought home fragmentary collections, made in widely scattered localities, and these have been usually described in huge folios or quartos, whose value is often in inverse proportion to their bulk and cost. The same species have been collected again and again, often described several times over under new names, and not unfrequently stated to be from places they never inhabited. The result of this wretched system is that the productions of some of the most frequently visited and most interesting islands on the globe are still very imperfectly known, while their native plants and animals are being yearly exterminated, and this is the case even with countries under the rule or protection of European governments. Such are the Sandwich Islands, Tahiti, the Marquesas, the Philippine Islands, and a host of smaller ones; while Bourbon and Mauritius, St. Helena, and several others, have only been adequately explored after an important portion of their productions has been destroyed by cultivation or the reckless introduction of goats and pigs. The employment in each of our possessions, and those of other European powers, of a resident naturalist at a very small annual expense, would have done more for the advancement of knowledge in this direction than all the expensive expeditions that have again and again circumnavigated the globe.
[3] The general facts of Palæontology, as bearing on the migrations of animal groups, are summarised in my Geographical Distribution of Animals, Vol. I. Chapters VI., VII., and VIII.
[4] Since these lines were written, a fine series of specimens of this rare humming-bird has been obtained from the same locality. (See Proc. Zool. Soc. 1881, pp. 827-834.)
[5] Many of these large genera are now subdivided, the divisions being sometimes termed genera, sometimes sub-genera.
[6] The Palæarctic region includes temperate Asia and Europe, as will be explained in the next chapter.
[7] The following list of the genera of reptiles and amphibia peculiar to the Palæarctic Region has been furnished me by Mr. G. A. Boulenger, of the British Museum:—
| Snakes. | Frogs and Toads. |
| Achalinus—China, Japan. Cœlopeltis—S. Eur., N. Af., S.W. Asia. Macroprotodon—S. Eur., N. Af. Taphrometopon—Cent. Asia. | Pelobates—Eur., S.W. Asia. Pelodytes—W. Europe. Discoglossus—S. Eur., N.W. Af. Bombinator—Eur., Temp. Asia. Alytus—Cent. and W. Eur. |
| Lizards. | Newts. |
| Phrynocephalus—Cent. and S.W. Asia. Anguis—Europe, W. Asia. Blanus—S.W. Eur., N.W. Africa, S.W. Asia. Trogonophis—N.W. Africa. Lacerta—Eur., Temp. Asia, N. Africa (one sp. in W. Af.). Psammodromus—S.W. Eur., N.W. Africa. Algiroides—S. Eur. | Salamandra—Eur., N. Af., S.W. Asia. Chioglossa—Spain and Portugal. Salamandrina—Italy. Pachytriton—East Thibet. Hynobius—China and Japan. Geomolge—E. Manchuria. Onychodactylus—Japan. Salamandrella—Siberia. Ranidens—Siberia. Batrachyperus—East Thibet. Myalobatrachus—China, Japan. Proteus—Caverns of S. Austria. |
[8] Remains of the dingo have been found fossil in Pleistocene deposits but the antiquity of man in Australia is not known. It is not, however, improbable that it may be as great as in Europe. My friend A. C. Swinton, Esq., while working in the then almost unknown gold-field of Maryborough, Victoria, in January, 1855, found a fragment of a well-formed stone axe resting on the metamorphic schistose bed-rock about five feet beneath the surface. It was overlain by the compact gravel drift called by the miners "cement," and by an included layer of hard iron-stained sandstone. The fragment is about an inch and three-eighths wide and the same length, and is of very hard fine-grained black basalt. One side is ground to a very smooth and regular surface, terminating in a well-formed cutting edge more than an inch long, the return face of the cutting part being about a quarter of an inch wide. The other side is a broken surface. The weapon appears to have been an axe or tomahawk closely resembling that figured at p. 335 of Lumholtz's Among Cannibals, from Central Queensland. The fragment was discovered by Mr. Swinton and the late Mr. Mackworth Shore, one of the discoverers of the gold-field, before any rush to it had taken place, and it seems impossible to avoid the conclusion that it was formed prior to the deposit of the gravel drift and iron-stained sandstone under which it lay. This would indicate a great antiquity of man in Australia, and would enable us to account for the fossilised remains of the dingo in Pleistocene deposits as those of an animal introduced by man.