Island life

Wallace's Island Life is one of the foundation works of zoogeography. It focused on the detailed problems of animal dispersal and speciation. Like Darwin, Wallace classified islands as either oceanic (no previous connection to a land mass) or continental (previously connected to a land mass). He considered the means by which each class of island might become colonized, the types of animals most likely to perform the necessary migrations, and the conditions-such as major climactic or geologic change-under which the migrations might have been made. Wallace was the first to use the new knowledge of Pleistocene ice ages to explain certain phenomena of animal distribution, and in Island Life he speculated about the possible causes of glaciation. He was one of the few 19th-century scientists to realize that astronomical causes alone would not suffice, but had to be combined with a corresponding elevation in the northern land mass -- Abe books website.

First sentence: WHEN an Englishman travels by the nearest sea-route from Great Britain to Northern Japan he passes by countries very unlike his own, both in aspect and natural productions.

Year

1880

Language

English

Publisher

Cosimo Classics

Editions

2

Pages

540

ISBN

9781602065031

Data source: Wikidata