Assuming, then, that there are, or may be, more areas of creation
than one, the question naturally arises how many of them are
there, and what are their respective extents and boundaries; or,
in other words, what are the most natural primary ontological
divisions of the earth's surface?"
Mr. Sclater's answer was that there are six great regions;
Neotropical, Nearctic, Palaearctic, Ethiopian, Indian, and Australian,
and his answer, with minor alterations and the addition of a great
wealth of detail, has been accepted by zooelogy.
Two years later, however, Darwin gave a new meaning and a new
importance to Sclater's work, by the new interpretation he caused to
be placed on the words "centres of creation." Sclater's facts and
areas remained the same; Darwin rejected the idea of separate
creations in the older sense of the words, and laid stress on the
impossibility of accounting for the resemblances within a region and
for the differences between regions by climatic differences and so
forth. He raised the questions of modes of dispersal and of barriers
to dispersal, of similarities due to common descent, and of the
modifying results produced by isolation. He gave, in fact, a theory of
the "creations" which Mr.
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