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Life on the Earth (v. 2); Its Origin and Succession
Life on the Earth Its Origin and Succession - v. 2 Author:John Phillips Volume: v. 2 General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1860 Original Publisher: Macmillan and co. Subjects: Life, Origin of Paleontology Life Nature / Fossils Science / General Science / Life Sciences / Biology / General Science / Life Sciences / Evolution Science / Earth Sciences / Geology Scien... more »ce / Paleontology Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: Lion and Leopard, are copied so to speak by the Puma and Jaguar of tropical America; the Tapir of Mexico mimics the congeneric animal of Sumatra ; the Sloth, Armadillo, and Myrmecophaga of Brazil, find relatives in the Manis and Orycteropus of Asia and Africa. These parallels might be extended by many examples from Struthious and other birds, and from Crocodiles and other reptiles, tending to shew in two large separated regions, two distinct but analogous groups of life, subject to similar limitations by climate. In like manner, reef-making Corals in the sea, and the large molluscous families of Cones, Cowries, and Volutes, might be mentioned as characterizing the warmer waters; but a more curious and interesting law of distribution of marine life, is founded on investigation of the contents of the sea at different depths. INFLUENCE OF DEPTH ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF LIFE IN THE SEA. One example, the best known, is the Survey of the Mgean sea-depths by the late excellent naturalist, Edward Forbes. Dividing the depths from the surface to 230 fathoms into eight unequal zones, he findsthe distribution of testaceous mollusca in them to be as under: The first column gives the zones in succession downwards. The second gives the limits of the zone in depth by fathoms. The third, the depth in thickness of each zone in fathoms. The fou...« less