The History of the European FaunaScharff, R. F. (Robert Francis)
History
The History of the European Fauna
Scharff, R. F. (Robert Francis)
Animals -- Europe; Zoogeography
In dealing with the British fauna in particular, I have drawn attention
to the fact that it is chiefly in the south of England that we find
fossil remains of eastern species of mammals in recent geological
deposits. We can actually trace the remains of these species and their
course of migration across part of the Continent towards Eastern Europe,
and as none of their bones have been discovered in the southern or
northern parts of our Continent, it must be assumed that their home lay
in Siberia, where many still exist to the present day, and where closely
allied forms also are found. Some of these Siberian migrants have
remained in England and on the Continent to the present day. Many have
become extinct. But the animals forming this eastern migration did not
all originate in Siberia, though I have sometimes spoken of them
collectively as Siberian migrants. There must have been other centres of
dispersion of species in Europe. We know that a very active centre of
development--at any rate for land-mollusca--lay in South-eastern Europe,
either in the Caucasus or in the Balkan peninsula, or more probably in
both. The Alps no doubt produced a number of species which have spread
north and south, and may in their wanderings have joined the Siberian
migrants in their western course, and thus have reached the British
Islands. Nevertheless, the majority of the mammals belonging to the
eastern element of the British fauna (_vide_ p. 95) have undoubtedly
originated in Siberia. The Polecat (_Mustela putorius_) and the Harvest
Mouse (_Mus minutus_), for instance, are members of that eastern
migration. Both occur throughout Central Europe and a large portion of
Siberia, but are absent from the extreme north and south of Europe and
also from all the Mediterranean Islands. A Siberian species, which has
never penetrated so far west as the British Islands, nor even so far
north as Scandinavia or south to Italy, is what is known in Germany as
the "Hamster" (_Cricetus frumentarius_), a little Rodent which spends
the winter asleep in its burrows, and surrounds itself with a great
accumulation of food-material carried there during autumn. The common
English Hare, which I formerly regarded as an instance of a Siberian
mammal, must now find a place among the Oriental migrants. Its history
is very instructive, and I shall have an opportunity later on to refer
to it again. Meanwhile, it may be mentioned that though this Hare
inhabits Europe in two varieties or races, one of which, _Lepus
mediterraneus_, is confined to Southern Europe, the latter owes its
origin to an earlier migration from Asia.
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