1
10
1
-
https://s3.amazonaws.com/atg-prod-oaas-files/hist1952/original/1824a8089ee20b4a4b9b4eb0d5ddd600.jpg
1d9fcc75a842f26524a581091dfc417a
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Wallace's Line
Description
An account of the resource
This collection displays snapshots of the career of Alfred Russel Wallace. Best known for his simultaneous discovery of evolution with Charles Darwin, Wallace is also notable for pioneering the discipline of biogeography. The maps in this collection show the arc of his career in exploration and theory related to the distributions of animal species. Wallace was trained as a railway surveyor before beginning his career in natural history, and mapping was a crucial part of his scientific thinking. The prelude to his essay describing the mechanism of natural selection was one describing how similar species arise coincident in space and time. His work on evolution was central to his career, but so too was his work delineating how different groups of species occupied different parts of the world. This collection features maps produced for Wallace's publications which visualize his process of creating geographical divisions based on animal life.
Historical Map
Fill out as many of these fields as possible. Required Dublin core fields include Title, Description, Publisher
Type
individual map, atlas sheet, book figure, part of bound collection, born-digital
Book figure
Cartographer
Edward Stanford
John Bolton
Format notes
This map is included in the book by Wallace, but it is unclear whether he produced it. In his text, he notes that Mr. Stanford and Mr. Bolton worked out the details of the maps. These men, the proprietor and cartographer of Stanford's map shop in London, most likely made the map for Wallace's book.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The World on Mercator's Projection Shewing the Zoogeographical Regions and the Approximate Undulations of the Ocean Bed
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
The geographical distribution of animals; with a study of the relations of living and extinct faunas as elucidating the past changes of the Earth's surface. Vol. 1.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Harper & Brothers
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1876
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Alfred Russel Wallace
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
World (excluding Antarctica)
Description
An account of the resource
This map is the frontispiece of Wallace's book "On the Geographical Distribution of Animals. With a Study of the Relations of Living and Extinct Faunas as Elucidating the Past Changes of the Earth's Surface" (1876). This map shows the 6 regions into which Wallace believed the world could be divided based on the distinct groups of animals living in them. It also draws lines around subdivisions within those regions; Wallace established each of these subdivisions by comparing the ranges of many species and higher-level groups of animals and locating borders past which the ranges of numerous animal groups did not extend. The red lines on this map are not absolute boundaries that no taxonomic groups cross. Many cosmopolitan animal groups live in multiple of these regions, but Wallace thought constructing biogeographical regions was still important because, as the title of his book suggests, a sense of what regions share biota can help scientists figure out historical associations between different landmasses. Biogeography has serious implications for the evolution of both life and earth, and Wallace's evolutionary theories were based on his study of biogeographical ranges. Wallace was not the first to map out biogeographical regions of the world. He built off of the work of earlier natural historians and explorers who had noted distinct floras of plants on different continents and of the ornithologist Philip Lutley Sclater who, a few years earlier, had divided the world into six regions based on their passerine birds. However, Wallace, unlike any before him, focused his whole career on studying the distribution of species. This map shows the global scale of the conclusions that he was able to draw with further study building off his experience observing the details of species in the Malay Archipelago.
and city names
Australian region
biogeographical division line
continent outlines
contours of sea depth
dashed lines
desert labels
Ethiopan region
mountain range labels
Nearctic region
Neotropical region
numbers and outlines of subdivisions within biogeographical regions
Oriental region
Palaearctic region
region
selected country
shading of biogeographic regions
solid lines