Island Life: Or, The Phenomena and Causes of Insular Faunas and Floras, Including a Revision and Attempted Solution of the Problem of Geological Climates |
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Page 216 - Paraguay offers the most curious instance of this; for here neither cattle nor horses nor dogs have ever run wild, though they swarm southward and northward in a feral state; and Azara and Rengger have shown that this is caused by the greater number in Paraguay of a certain fly, which lays its eggs in the navels of these animals when first born.
Page 83 - Palaeozoic systems — no features recur more continually than the alternations of different sediments, and the recurrence of surfaces covered with well-preserved ripple-marks, trails and burrows of annelides, polygonal and irregular desiccation marks, like the cracks at the bottom of a sun-dried muddy pool. These phenomena unequivocally point to shallow and even littoral waters. They occur from bottom to top of formations, which reach a thickness of several thousand feet.
Page 201 - Consequently, if the theory be true, it is indisputable that before the lowest Cambrian stratum was deposited long periods elapsed, as long as, or probably far longer than, the whole interval from the Cambrian age to the present day ; and that during these vast periods the world swarmed with living creatures.
Page 214 - It is not of course supposed that the calculation here given marks any approach to accuracy, but it is believed that it does indicate the order of magnitude of the time required.
Page 202 - In this earliest known varied life we find no evidence of its having lived near the beginning of the zoological series. In a broad sense, compared with what must have gone before, both biologically and physically, all the phenomena connected with this old period seem, to...
Page 280 - At this time, however, the Governor of the Island reported to the Court of Directors of the East India Company, that the timber was rapidly disappearing, and that the goats should be destroyed for the preservation of the Ebony wood, and because the Island was suffering from droughts. He received the laconic reply, ' The goats are not to be destroyed, being more valuable than Ebony.
Page 202 - Palaeozoic times we must go, before we can hope to arrive at that common stock from which the Crocodilia, Lacertilia, Ornithoscelida, and Plesiosauria, which had attained so great a development in the Triassic epoch, must have been derived.
Page 216 - Paraguay, the parasitic insects would probably increase; and this would lessen the number of the navel-frequenting flies — then cattle and horses would become feral, and this would certainly greatly alter (as indeed I have observed in parts of South America) the vegetation: this again would largely affect the insects; and this, as we have just seen in Staffordshire, the insectivorous birds, and so onwards in ever-increasing circles of complexity.
Page 194 - ... In the case of the Glacial epoch the cold periods were intensely severe and the warm periods but moderately hot; whereas in regard to the Tertiary cold periods they were but moderately cool, and the warm periods exceedingly hot. Mr. Wallace, who refers to Mr. Gardner's views approvingly, says: — "In the case of marine faunas it is more difficult to judge, but the numerous changes in the fossil remains from bed to bed, only a few feet and sometimes a few inches apart...