Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/562

544 ness was most striking. Yet an entomologist, resting on trifling peculiarities hardly the signs of a variety, described it as a new species. It is impossible to admit this. It was then learned that the genus Parnassius, which were believed peculiar to the mountains of Europe and Asia, existed in California. The species were distinct from those of the Old World; according to the conventional expression, they were typical species. Afterward a species of the same genus was observed on the western coast of North America which was regarded as peculiar to Siberia and Mongolia. Papilio Hippocrates, a butterfly of a remarkable type, which was known in Japan, has been found in North America.

Passing to vertebrate animals, I confine myself to the mention of a small number of most characteristic types. Among the rodents we remark the marmot, Arctomys pruniosus, or sonslik of Siberia, which lives in Kamchatka, on the Alaskan Peninsula, and on the American continent. Among all the carnivorous animals of the family of the Mustelidæ, or weasels, we remark the sable of eastern Asia in Kamchatka, Alaska, and other northern parts of the American continent. A carnivorous animal of another group, the glutton, or wolverine, is found in the same regions.

In this latter part of my paper I have spoken wholly of animals and plants common to Asia and America, as in the former part I spoke only of those common to Europe and North America. But while I omit to make long enumerations of species, I insist on the fact that plants and animals are distributed in considerable numbers over the whole extent of the arctic regions in Europe, Asia, and America, having accomplished the whole circuit of that zone at an epoch when the continuity of the land made possible an indefinite dissemination to the full extent that climatic conditions were favorable.

With the present condition exactly determined, and the former condition recognized, a sure foundation is laid for the science of the future; new changes will be produced in the course of a few centuries in the configurations of the lands and the seas, and then men of science will be able to form theories of value.—Translated for The Popular Science Monthly from the Revue Scientifique.

work of searching for the affinities of great groups is declared by Prof. Coulter to be the crying need of systematic botany. There is danger of magnifying the importance of certain periods or organs in indicating affinities. For the best and most permanent results of systematic botany, it should take into account development at every period and of every organ, and so obtain a mass of cumulative evidence for safe generalization.