Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/537

Rh We find, then, that neither the general influence of solar light and heat, nor the special action of variously tinted rays, are adequate causes for the wonderful variety, intensity and complexity of the colors that everywhere meet us in the animal and vegetable worlds. Let us, therefore, take a wider view of these colors, grouping them into classes determined by what we know of their actual uses or special relations to the habits of their possessors. This, which may be termed the functional and biological classification of the colors of living organisms, seems to be best expressed by a division into five groups, as follows:

Twelve years later be devoted four chapters of his "Darwinism" to the colors of animals and plants, still maintaining the hypotheses of utility, of spontaneous variation and of selection.

The study of geographic distribution of animals also sprang from the inspiration of the Malayan journey and from the suggestiveness of the eleventh and twelfth chapters of "The Origin of Species" which Wallace determined to work out in an exhaustive manner. Following the preliminary treatises of Buffon, of Cuvier and Forbes, and the early regional classification of Sclater, Wallace takes rank as the founder of the science of zoogeography in his two great works, "The Geographical Distribution of Animals" of 1876, and "Island Life" of 1881, the latter volume following the first as the result of four years of additional thought and research. His early observations on insular distribution were sketched out in his article of 1860, "The Zoological Geography of the Malayan Archipelago."

Here is his discovery of the Bali-Lombok boundary line between the Indian and the Australian zoological regions which has since been generally known by his name.

In these fundamental geologic and geographic works Wallace appears as a disciple of Lyell in uniformitarianism, and a follower of Dana as regards the stability and permanence of continental and oceanic areas, for which doctrine he advances much original evidence. He taxes his ingenuity to discover every possible means of dispersal of animals and plants other than those which would be afforded by hypothetical land connections; he considers every possible cause of extinction other than those which are sudden or cataclysmal.

The "Island Life" is in itself a great contribution to zoology and zoogeography, the starting point of all modern discussion of insular faunas and floras. His conservative theory of dispersal is applied in an original way to explain the arctic element in the mountain regions of the tropics, as opposed to the low-temperature theory of tropical lowlands during the Glacial Period: his explanation is founded on known facts as to the dispersal and distribution of plants, and does not require the