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Show 1887.] PROF. BELL ON THE BRITISH MARINE AREA. 561 we have received advance copies of the Report of the British Association Committee, " appointed for the purpose of considering the question of accurately defining the term ' British,' as applied to the Marine Fauna and Flora of our Islands." To us it is a question of especial interest, feeling as we do that our best efforts ought to be directed to the care and maintenance of one of the most instructive and one of the most popular of the Galleries in the British Museum of Natural History-the one which is ordinarily known as the British Room. W h e n we ask ourselves what that room should contain, we have to answer-the products of the British Seas ; and when we go further and ask, W h a t are the British Seas ? there is only one answer that can be given us-the waters that wash the British"coasts as far as three miles from land. This is, all the world knows, an arbitrary or conventional arrangement. If, on the other hand, we seek for the natural boundaries of the British Marine Area, we are met by the facts that it merges on the south into that of the coasts of France, and on the north into those of Norway ; the only species that can be considered in any way peculiar to it are little-known forms from great depths, such as Amphiura bellis, var. tritonis, of Hoyle. Indeed, in the classical work of Edward Forbes1, the Shetland Islands form part of his Boreal Province, and the rest of the British Isles constitute the northern portion of the Celtic Province, whose southern boundary is the Bay of Biscay. W e are therefore forced to conclude that there is no such thing as a British Marine Area ; this is not to be taken as implying that we think that the British Association Committee were engaged on a task which was a mere waste of time, but only to give force to the way in which we should wish to approach the question. Without seeking for limitations, we ask what may we put in the " British Room," or whence may collectors who confine their collections to British specimens get their examples? If we are to bind ourselves by the rules of the Committee, we must omit specimens taken from the Channel Islands: this we cannot but think is a regrettable decision ; the community of the fauna on either bank of the English Channel is very well marked, but, as a rule, the specimens which come from the southern side are so much finer, and the opportunities for collecting them are generally so much more advantageous that (bearing always in mind that we have to do with an artificially restricted area) we should be reluctant to lose our best hunting-ground. W e may, we think, claim that Dr. G w y n Jeffreys would have been of this opinion 2. Our view, then, as to the limits of the area are best expressed in the following terms : we would apply the principle of using political divisions cumgrano salis-including, that is, the Channel Islands, the Shetlands, and St. Kilda, but omitting Heligoland. It m a y be pointed out that a strict interpretation of the rules pro- 1 ' Natural History of the European Seas.' 2 See his ' British Conchology,' i. p. cxi. |
