The Cambridge natural history, Vol. 03 (of 10)Cooke, A. H. (Alfred Hands)
Science
The Cambridge natural history, Vol. 03 (of 10)
Cooke, A. H. (Alfred Hands)
Animals
_Planorbis albus_ occurs in the whole of Europe, and northern Asia to
Amoorland, Kamschatka, and Japan; Turkestan, the Altai-Baikal district,
Alaska and Greenland, North Canada, and the whole of eastern North
America.
The distribution of _Anodonta anatina_ L., _Cyclas cornea_ L., and
_Pisidium pusillum_ Gmel. is almost equally wide.
It is evident that the accidental means of transport mentioned above
are insufficient to account for the facts as we find them; we are
therefore compelled to seek for further explanation. Anything in the
nature of a current furnishes a ready means of transport for Mollusca
which have obtained a footing in the upper waters of a river, and there
is no difficulty in imagining the gradual spread of species, through
the agency of floods or otherwise, over a whole river system, when
once established at any point upon it. The feeble clinging power of
newly-hatched _Limnaea_ has often been noticed as contributing to the
chances of their range of distribution becoming extended. Fresh-water
Mollusca, too, or their ova, are exceedingly likely, from their
extreme abundance, to be transported by water-birds, which fly without
alighting from one piece of water to another. Again, the isolation
of one river system from another is, in many instances, by no means
well marked or permanent, and a very slight alteration of level will
frequently have the effect of diverting the supplies of one watershed
into another. When we know what enormous oscillations in level have
taken place over practically the whole surface of the globe, we can
recognise the probability that the whole river system of the earth has
been mixed up and reconstructed again and again, with a very thorough
blending of adjacent fauna.
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