Abstract
THE volume consists of sixteen papers by specialists who deal with particular parts of the subject. Two papers are geographical or geological, three are botanical, the remainder deal mainly with zoology, four of them with insects. One must recognise that it is extremely difficult to cover the ground adequately, for there are parts of Oceania and certain groups among the plants and animals about which we possess no information at all. But there are several important topics to which less than justice is done. There is, for example, almost nothing about the butterflies-a very important group to the student of island faunas, for these insects have been carefully collected, and a connected account of them could have been written. The birds also furnish an abundance of material, but the paper which deals with them is most indefinite, with facts about the birds of New Zealand and the Hawaiian Islands, but next to nothing on the avifauna of such well-known groups as Fiji and Samoa. Attention must be directed to one error in fact: it is stated that crocodiles occur in the Tuamotu islands, but actually their eastward limit is in the Santa Cruz, more than 3,000 miles to the west. The error is important, for one of the authors, having extended the range of crocodiles across Polynesia, is inclined to regard them as evidence that the area has a ‘continental’ fauna.
Contribution à l'étude du peuplement zoologique et botanique des lies du Pacifique.
Par L. Berland J. Berlioz E. H. Bryan Miss E. Cheesman L. Joleaud L. Chopard L. Germain A. Guillaumin K. Holdhaus E. P. Mumford A. M. Adamson P. Rivet L. Seurat C. Skottsberg E. Topsent C. Vallaux. (Société de Biogéographie, 4.) Pp. iv + 288. (Paris: Paul Lechevalier et fils, 1934.) 70 francs.
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B., P. Contribution à l'étude du peuplement zoologique et botanique des lies du Pacifique. Nature 135, 50 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/135050a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/135050a0
