File:Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (1915) (18410025302).jpg

Title: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
Identifier: annalsofnewyo26191516newy (find matches)
Year: 1877 (1870s)
Authors: New York Academy of Sciences
Subjects: Science
Publisher: New York, New York Academy of Sciences
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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LUTZ, LIST OF GREATER ANTILLEAN SPIDERS 125 wonderful success but the)' clo not seem to be good material for a West Indian discussion because there are so few of them. It is decidedly in- teresting that, except for bats, the Antillean mammals are rodents be- longing to South American groups and Solenodon. a genus of Insectivora, whose nearest relatives are found only in Madagascar. These relation- ships will be referred to later but it may be noted in passing that such distributions are fairly common among spiders. The figures given by Wallace for birds show that about one-third of the Antillean genera are peculiar. This proportion is far greater than that for spiders aurl. wlien
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Fig. 3.—Sandy plain south of Pinar del Rio, Ciiha compared with the bird fauna of Central America, for example, sliows a high degree of specialit)^, but Wallace's list gives only 95 geiiera of birds for the West Indies and there are more than 500 geuera in Central America. The small number of vertebrates in the West hidies and tlie fact that a large proportion of those which are thei'e are ))eculiar ^eem to be evidences of the unfitness of the Antillean environment for vci'te- brate life rather than of any special distinctness of the Antilles from the standpoint of geographic distribution. It seems almost pedantic to point out the necessity of consideriiiii- on-

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