Memorandum.—New Publications will be noticed in our next Number.
MEMORANDUM.
Owing to the large space occupied by the Proceedings of the British Association for the Promotion of Science, held at Edinburgh in the month of August, 1850, various interesting communications are delayed until the next number of the Philosophical Journal.
THE
EDINBURGH NEW
PHILOSOPHICAL JOURNAL.
Geographical Distribution of Animals.
By Professor Louis Agassiz.
The greatest obstacles in the way of investigating the laws of the distribution of organized beings over the surface of our globe, are to be traced to the views generally entertained about their origin. There is a prevailing opinion, which ascribes to all living beings upon earth one common centre of origin, from which it is supposed they, in the course of time, spread over wider and wider areas, till they finally came into their present state of distribution; and what gives this view a higher recommendation, in the opinion of most men, is the circumstance, that such a method of distribution is considered as revealed in our sacred writings. We hope, however, to be able to shew that there is no such statement in the Book of Genesis; that this doctrine of a unique centre of origin, and successive distribution of all animals is of very modern invention; and that it can be traced back for scarcely more than a century in the records of our science.