The modifications of the external aspects of organic nature produced by man's interference / by George Rolleston.
- George Rolleston
- Date:
- 1880
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The modifications of the external aspects of organic nature produced by man's interference / by George Rolleston. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![plus riche en eau et plus pauvres en matieres minerales que la plante de menie espece sous cage isolaute.” M. Cell’s adaptation of one of Sir W. Thomson’s apparatuses as an “ Appareil pour experimenter Taction de Telectricite sur les plantes vivantes,” cit. and figured by M. Grandeau in loco from ‘ Annales de Chimie et de Physique,’ ser. v. tom. xv., October 1878, is well worthy of inspection in this connection.] The next part of my Lecture will be devoted to showing by the aid of three maps and one statistical table, how greatly man lias modified the external aspect of the world he lives in by the introduction into the several parts of it of cultivated plants and domestic animals, previously, of course, unknown even in the wild state, to such areas of its surface. The maps by their colours show the areas on which the parent stocks of the most valuable and now most widely spread of these acquisitions have, with more or less of approach to demonstration, been shown to be indigenous. The short table of statistics tells you in its second line that one-half of all of them came from one single “ quarter ” of the globe, or in the language of modern zoogeo- graphers from one single zoological “ region.” The table and the maps taken together show us how largely some quarters of tlie globe have been benefited by borrowing from others, or in the language of my subject, how largely they have been modified by man’s interference. The first of these maps is very closely similar to the one which shows on Mercator’s projection the now more or less generally accepted zoogeographical regions of the earth’s surface, the Palaearctic, to wit, the Ethiojjian, the Oriental, the Australian, and the two regions of the New World, the Nearctic and the Neotropical; as given by Mr. Sclater, and in Wallace’s great work on Geographical Distribution. The second of these maps is an enlargement of that given by Professor Huxley in the ‘Journal of the Ethnological Society of London,’ Juno 7th, 1870, to illustrate and embody his views on the distribution of the principal modifications of mankind. This map, besides other useful purposes, serves specially that of limiting off, by a spt cial colouration, a particular portion of the vast Palmarctic region which is specially important to the subject in hand, as it was either actually upon it, or upon regions closely adjacent to it within that region, that the parent stocks of the moiety of our culti- vated plants and domesticated animals may either be found still living or may reasonably be supposed to have existed formerly. The particular subdivision of the Palaearctic Region](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2244032x_0044.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
