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Show B52 GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION. CnAP. xr. is also obvious that the individuals of the same species, though now inhabiting distant and isolated regions, must have proceeded from one spot, where their parents were first produced: for, as explained in the last chapter, it is incredible that individuals identically the same should ever have been produced through natural selection from parents specifically distinct. We are thus brought to the question which has been largely discussed by naturalists, namely, whether species have been created at one or more points of the earth's surface. Undoubtedly there are very many cases of extreme difficulty, in understanding how the same species could possibly have migrated from some one point to the several distant and isolated points, where now found. Nevertheless the simplicity of the view that each species was first produced within a single reo-ion captivates the mind. He who rejects it, rejects 5 the vera causa of ordinary generation with subsequent migration, and calls in the agency of a miracle. It is universally admitted, that in most cases the area inhabited by a species is continuous; and when a plant or animal inhabits two points so distant from each other, or with an interval of such a nature, that the space could not be easily passed over by migration, the fact is given as something remarkable and exceptional. 'fhe capacity of migrating across the sea is more distinctly limited in terrestrial mammals, than perhaps in any other organic beings ; and, accordingly, we :find no inexplicable cases of the same mammal inhabiting distant points of the world. No geologist will feel any difficulty in such cases as Great Britain having been formerly united to Europe, and consequently possessing the same quadrupeds. But if the same species can be produced at two separate points, why do we not find. a single mammal common to Europe and Australia or South America? The conditions of life are CHAP. XI. SINGLE CENTRES OF CREATION. 353 nearly the same, so that a multitude of European animals and plants have become naturalised in America and Australia; and some of the aboriginal plants are identically the same at these distant points of the northern and southern hemispheres? The answer, as I believe, is, that mammals have not been able to migrate, whereas some plants, from their varied means of dispersal, have migrated across the vast and broken interspace. The great and striking influence which barriers of every kind have had on distribution, is intelligible only on the view that the great majority of species have been produced on one side alone, and have not been able to migrate to the other side. Some few families, many sub-families, very many genera, and a still greater number of sections of genera are confined to a single region ; and it has been observed by several naturalists, that the most natural genera, or those genera in which the species are most closely related to each other, are generally local, or confined to one area. What a strange anomaly it would be, if, when coming one step lower in the series, t? the individuals of the same species, a directly oppoSite rule prevailed; and species were not local, but had been produced in two or more distinct areas ! ~ence it seems to me, as it has to many other naturalists, .that the view of each species having been produced In one area alone, and having subsequently migrated fr?m that area as far as its powers of migration and subsistence under past and present con eli tions permitted? is t~e most probable. Undoubtedly many cases occur, In whwh we cannot explain how the same species could have passed from one point to the other. But th~ geographical and ·climatal changes, which have certainly. occurred within recent geological times, must have Interrupted or rendered discontinuous the formerly continuous range of many species. So that we are reduced to consider whether the exceptions to |
