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the inroads of competitors, can withstand a much warmer climate than
→their own. Hence, it seems to me possible, bearing in mind that the tropical productions were in a suffering
and could not have presented a firm front against intruders, that a certain number of the more vigorous and dominant temperate forms might have penetrated the native
and have reached or even crossed the equator. The invasion would, of course, have been greatly favoured by high land, and perhaps by a dry climate; for Dr. Falconer informs me that it is the damp with the heat of the tropics which is so destructive to perennial plants from a temperate climate. On the other hand, the most humid and hottest districts
have afforded an asylum
the
natives. The mountain-ranges north-west of the Himalaya, and the long line of the Cordillera, seem to have afforded two great lines of invasion: and it is a striking fact,
communicated to me by Dr. Hooker, that all the flowering plants, about forty-six in number, common to Tierra del Fuego and to
still exist in North America, which must have lain on the line of march. ↑
I
→do not doubt that
some temperate productions entered and crossed even the
of the tropics at the period when the cold was most intense,— when arctic forms
→had migrated some
twenty-five degrees of
→from their native country,
and covered the land at the foot of the Pyrenees. At this period of extreme cold, I believe that the climate under the equator at the level of the sea was about the same with that now felt there at the height of
→six or seven
thousand feet. During this the coldest period,
→OMIT
large spaces of the tropical lowlands were
with a mingled tropical and temperate vegetation, like that now growing with strange luxuriance at the base of the Himalaya,
→as
graphically described by Hooker. |
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| Thus, as I believe, a considerable number of plants, a few terrestrial animals, and some marine productions, migrated during the Glacial period from the northern and southern temperate zones into the intertropical regions, and some even crossed the equator. As the warmth returned, these temperate forms would naturally ascend the higher mountains, being exterminated on the
those which had not reached the
would re-migrate northward or southward towards their former homes; but the forms, chiefly northern, which had crossed the equator, would travel still
from their homes into the more temperate latitudes of the opposite hemisphere. Although we have reason to believe from geological evidence that the whole body of arctic shells underwent scarcely any modification during their long southern migration and re-migration northward, the case may have been wholly different with those intruding forms which settled themselves on the intertropical mountains, and in the southern hemisphere. These being surrounded by strangers will have had to compete with many new forms of life; and it is probable that selected modifications in their structure, habits, and constitutions will have profited them. Thus many of these wanderers, though still plainly related by inheritance to their brethren of the northern or southern hemispheres, now exist in their new homes as well-marked varieties or as distinct species. |
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| It is a remarkable
strongly insisted on by Hooker in regard to America, and by Alph. de Candolle in regard to Australia, that many more identical
→plants and allied forms have apparently
migrated from the north to the south, than in a reversed direction. We see, however, a few southern
forms on the mountains of Borneo and Abyssinia. I suspect that
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