[More Letters of Charles Darwin by Charles Darwin]@TWC D-Link bookMore Letters of Charles Darwin CHAPTER 1 152/236
Soc." Volume V., page 335 (read November 24th, 1860), Mr.Bates discusses the migration of species from the equatorial regions after the Glacial period.
He arrives at a result which, he points out, "is highly interesting as bearing upon the question of how far extinction is likely to have occurred in equatorial regions during the time of the Glacial epoch."..."The result is plain, that there has always (at least throughout immense geological epochs) been an equatorial fauna rich in endemic species, and that extinction cannot have prevailed to any extent within a period of time so comparatively modern as the Glacial epoch in geology." This conclusion does not support the view expressed in the "Origin of Species" (Edition I., chapter XI., page 378) that the refrigeration of the earth extended to the equatorial regions.
(Bates, loc.cit., pages 352, 353.)) You seem to me to have put the case with admirable clearness and with crushing force.
I am quite staggered with the blow, and do not know what to think.
Of late several facts have turned up leading me to believe more firmly that the Glacial period did affect the equatorial regions; but I can make no answer to your argument, and am completely in a cleft stick.
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