Audubon Republican. [volume] (Audubon, Iowa) 1894-1925, 1895-08-15
TERRESTRIAL LIFE.
Anomalies In the Distribution of Animals
on the Earth's Surface.

tribution of animals on the surface OF
the earth have for long time attract.
cd the attention of the zoologist. How
came the lemurs, those frail inhab.
itants OF tropical forests, to live along
the southern parts of Asia, separated
from their kin in Africa and Madagas-
car by the wide ocean? Why should
ostrichlike birds live in Africa and Aus
tralia, and again at the southern part
OF South America? Not long ago zoolo-
gists, relying upon the current opinion
OF geology, played the Titan with land
and water, inventing great continents
and planting them in the oceans. Thus
at their command "Lemuria" arose
from out the sea to make land pas
sage from Madagascar TO India; even
at the present moment many assert
that huge continent, now sunk in the
waste of waters round the southern
hemisphere, stretched from the cape to
Australia and from Australia to Pata-
gonia.
But geology, as it has abandoned tho
theory of catastrophes for the theory
of slow transformation, is also giving
up belief in such gigantic alterations
of land and sea. The great oceans,
the great land masses, it tells us, date
as far back as geological evidence goes.
Oceans and continents may have al
tered their outlines; Malaysia, now an
| archipelago, was once a continent.
Africa, now continuous land mass,
may have been broken up into islands
by the intruding sea. In great land
areas, continuous slow rising and fall.
ing has occurred, each area passing re-
currently through successive phases;
archipelagoes have risen to be in
denied continents, indented continents
to be a continuous mass, and the whole
has then fallen back again to it's orig
nal condition. But the sea and the
and in their broad masses remain as
when first divided.
What, then, is the form of this SEM
piternal CONFORMATION? In the minds
of most of us it is a vague image re-
membered from distorted "Merca-
tors Projection" or from the eastern
and western hemispheres f1attened on
the pages of an atlas. These images
are dimmed toward the poles, and so
fail to give the most striking aspect
of sea and land. But, taking globe,
turn either pole alternately toward
you. In the south clump of icebound
land. well within the Atlantic circle,
surrounds the pole. All else is the
wide domain of ocean, broken only by
tapering and isolated tongues of land,
South America, the Cape, Australia,
leaning down from the north. On the
other hand, all the great continents
expand in the northern hemisphere
and shoulder each other around the
pole. America is separated from Asia
only by the shallowest and narrowest
of straits; an elevation of few
fathoms would unite Greenland with
Europe. The great land area of the
globe is as a cap thrown over the
northern hemisphere, with only tat
tered fringes hanging across the equa-
tor to the south
And where did terrestrial animals
come into being? Tradition places
their home eastward of Eden. Science
points certainly to some part of the
great northern land area as the center
of life for the larger terrestrial forms.
We know that these arose successive
ly, primitive birds like the ostriches
coming before higher forms, like the
pheasants and singing birds, tho
pouched marsupials preceding the
antelopes and the lion, the lemurs
coming before man-like sapes Each
wave of life, spread over the whole
continuous area, producing after it's
kind; then, pressing around the north
ern hemisphere, it met thousand diff
ferent conditions of environments, diff
ferent foods, enemies and climates, and
broke up into different genera and
species. But there was never a wave
of life that had not another following
it. In the struggle for existence be-
tween the older and newer type, gen.
orally the newer prevailed and drove
the older southwark toward the di-
yerging fringes of the land masses.
The vanquished left behind them on
the field of battle only their bones to
become fossils. Sometimes succeeding
waves swept along to the extreme
limits of the land, and many early
types were utterly destroyed. But
others found sanctuary in the ends Of
the south, and were preserved in is
lands broken off before the newer
types had reached them, or saved
their lives by becoming creatures Of
the night, dwelling in the Businesses
of tropical forests.
Fossil bones of ostrich-like birds oc-
cur in Europe and in Asia and in North
America; their living representatives
are the cassowaries of New Guinea,
the emus of Australia, the ostriches
of Africa, and the rheas of South
America. The oldest mammals now
alive, the duck-billed piatypus and
the spiny echidna, layers of eggs, kins-
men of the reptiles, have allies among
American and European fossils; in life
they are found only in Australia and
New Guinea. The pouched marsupilas
once ranged all over the earth, cover
ing it with strange mimicry of exist
ing mammals. Now they have been
beaten out of Europe and Asia, even
out of Africa, and almost entirely out
of North America; but they have found
refuge in South America. and, secluded
in Australia, they form nearly the