The explanation, I believe, lies in the nature
of the climate before the commencement of the Glacial period. At this, the
newer Pliocene period, the majority of the inhabitants of the world were
specifically the same as now, and we have good reason to believe that the
climate was warmer than at the present day. Hence, we may suppose that the
organisms which now live under latitude 60 degrees, lived during the
Pliocene period further north, under the Polar Circle, in latitude 66-67
degrees; and that the present arctic productions then lived on the broken
land still nearer to the pole. Now, if we look at a terrestrial globe, we
see under the Polar Circle that there is almost continuous land from
western Europe through Siberia, to eastern America. And this continuity of
the circumpolar land, with the consequent freedom under a more favourable
climate for intermigration, will account for the supposed uniformity of the
sub-arctic and temperate productions of the Old and New Worlds, at a period
anterior to the Glacial epoch.
Believing, from reasons before alluded to, that our continents have long
remained in nearly the same relative position, though subjected to great
oscillations of level, I am strongly inclined to extend the above view, and
to infer that during some earlier and still warmer period, such as the
older Pliocene period, a large number of the same plants and animals
inhabited the almost continuous circumpolar land; and that these plants and
animals, both in the Old and New Worlds, began slowly to migrate southwards
as the climate became less warm, long before the commencement of the
Glacial period.
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