Horváth Géza (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 18. (Budapest 1921)
Éhik, Gy.: The glacial-theories in the light of biological investigation
THE GLACIALrTHEORIES. 105 The above statements are also of a zoogeographical — faunistical — importance, inasmuch as they throw a light upon the origin of the various elements (species) constituting our recent faunae . To enter into a detailed discussion of such problems would deviate us however too much from our present subject. With respect to this question 1 should only like to emphasise that we should be cautious in supposing a general eastern origine of our European Vertebrates. 1 We saw that, owing to the extension resp. regression of the ice, two principal faunistical „migrations" took place: the first from N to S, the second, just opposite, from S to N. As regards the steppe fauna , the majority of its elements might be regarded as endemic.lt must be observed however that there exists another contingent of Pleistocene steppe elements, bearing a decidedly eastern character, so that a partial migration from E to W could not be denied. As far as we are informed, the eastern parts of Asia were not covered by inlandice. It is most probable that the fauna and flora were submitted there to quite a different kind of transformation, the steppe type having been earlier developed than in Europe. But it is also probable that the withdrawel of the ice has been a more rapid one in Western Europe, — a consequence of its suboceanic climate, — than in the eastern parts, characterised by rather continental climatic conditions. It is owing to this circumstance, as well as to the fact of the most different faunae having been gathered on a relatively small ground in consequence of the extending glaciation, that the territories from which the ice withdrew were populated at first by the inhabitants of the neighbouring and southern parts, and only later on by some eastern elements. That is to say that the Pleistocene fauna of the European steppes must differ a good deal from the synchronical fauna which existed on the Asiatic steppes, whilst the Present Russian steppes include the European Pleistocene steppe elements as well. If the gaps, occurring in our — as yet very unsatisfactory — knowledge about the Pleistocene fauna of the Asiatic steppes, could be filled up, the quoted suppositions — I should rather like to call them statements — could be definitively proved. The hypothesis developed in the present paper with regard to the glacial period and its biological consequences, is based only in as much upon a more safe ground than the preceeding opinions, as the fossil faunae constituted its point of departure, whilst the theories emitted by 1 The same thing lias been also stated by Dr. baron G. J. DE FEJÉRVÁKY , on ]). 427—430 of: Contr. to a Monogr. on fossil Varanidae and on Megalanidae. Ann. Mus. Nat. Hung., XIV. Budapest, 1918.
