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
As we go down in the scale of life--among the lower vertebrates and
invertebrates--we meet with a greater number of prominent members of the
Lusitanian migration. The Bullfinch, Dipper, and Chough, which might be
thought to be of Lusitanian origin, are, as I have shown in the last
chapter, Asiatic.
The European snakes seem to be all of eastern origin, unless
_Tropidonotus viperinus_ might be claimed as a Lusitanian form. Of very
great interest from a zoogeographical point of view is our only European
member of the South American and African family _Amphisbænidæ_. This
species--_Blanus cinereus_--is of the size and shape of an ordinary
earth-worm, from which, however, it may be distinguished by its
snake-like wriggling motions. It lives under stones in Spain and
Portugal, North-west Africa, and Greece. It has, therefore, a somewhat
similar distribution to that of many of the animals and plants referred
to in the last chapter. But here we have an animal which has evidently
utilised the old Mediterranean route described on p. 271, from west to
east. Two other species of _Blanus_ inhabit Asia Minor and Syria, but
most of its nearest relations either live in South America or tropical
Africa. In migrating to North and West Africa, its ancestors probably
made use of the land-bridge which spanned the Atlantic in early
Tertiary times. Another Lusitanian Lizard--belonging not to an aberrant
group, but to the typical Lacertidæ--is _Psammodromus hispanicus_. It is
rather variable in colour--generally of a brown or green--and grows to a
length at about four or five inches. It occurs throughout the Spanish
peninsula and also in Southern France. One of the handsomest European
Lizards, which reaches almost a foot in length,--of an olive colour with
greenish or mother-of-pearl reflection, and with two yellow stripes
along each side of the body,--is an allied species (_P. algirus_). From
the Spanish peninsula it passes into Southern France and North Africa.
Two other species of the genus are confined to North-west Africa.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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