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Updated: May 16, 2025
Our standard repertories of paleontology profess to teach us far higher things to disclose the entire succession of living forms upon the surface of the globe; to tell us of a wholly different distribution of climatic conditions in ancient times; to reveal the character of the first of all living existences; and to trace out the law of progress from them to us.
The climatic effect of different degrees of altitude upon the growth of animals and plants is the same as that of different degrees of latitude; and the slope of a high mountain in the Tropics, from base to summit, presents, in a condensed form, an epitome, as it were, of the same kind of gradation in vegetable growth that may be observed from the Tropics to the Arctics.
But Professor Weismann does not like such cases, and admits that he cannot explain the facts in connection with the climatic varieties of certain butterflies, except "by supposing the passive acquisition of characters produced by the direct influence of climate." Nevertheless in his next paragraph but one he calls such cases "doubtful," and proposes that for the moment they should be left aside.
Above these deposits comes what has been called in science the present period, the modern times of the geologist, that period to which man himself belongs, and since the beginning of which, though its duration be counted by hundreds of thousands of years, there has been no alteration in the general configuration of the earth, consequently no important modification of its climatic conditions, and no change in the animals and plants inhabiting it.
The "bird theory" is a failure, as we have shown; nor do they invariably fly due east or west, so as to supply the several climatic zones with their respective vegetations.
The western portion of the United States exhibits very interesting climatic features. In California, for example, there may be found every degree of temperature between tropic heat and arctic cold. In the deserts of the southeastern portion of the state the air is extremely dry, while in the northwest it rains nearly every month in the year.
For nearly half a century the fact has been known that the geographical distribution of the European flora, and especially that of the British Islands, was referable to latitude, elevation, and climatic conditions. As early as 1835, Mr.
Yet even there, where the shades of specific difference between many animals and plants of the same class are so slight as to battle the keenest investigators, we have representative types both in the Animal and Vegetable Kingdoms as distinct and peculiar as those of widely removed and strongly contrasted climatic conditions.
If this should take place under climatic conditions which would keep the whole as a mass in a frozen state, the pressure from above would force out the lower ice in every direction beyond its original circumscription, thus enlarging the area covered by it, while the whole would subside in its bulk.
The dampness of the Autumn was as terrible, under normal conditions that is to say in The Enormous Room as any climatic eccentricity which I have ever experienced.
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