Abstract
(Continued from page 114)
IN geographical biology Denmark proper is of no great importance except as a connecting link, on the one hand, between the Scandinavian peninsula and Central Europe, and, on the other, as the separating barrier between the Bailie and the North Seas. Low and flat, without any great variety in its physical features, it is unfavourable for the production or maintenance of endemic organisms, and forms an inseparable portion of the region of Central Europe. But the Arctic possessions included in the kingdom, Greenland, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands, are of great interest; and Denmark itself is remarkable for the number of eminent naturalists, zoologists as well as botanists, produced by so small a state. Its reputation in this respect, established by the great names mentioned in my review of Transactions in my Address of 1865, is being well kept up by Bergh, Krabbe, Liitken, Môrch, Reinhardt, Schiôdte, Steen-strup, and others in zoology; whilst Lange, (Ersted, and Warming are among the few who now devote themselves more or less to systematic botany. Their general zoological collection, when I last visited it, many years since, was not extensive, although rich in northern animals, and very well arranged under the direction of Steenstrup, and the insects in the Storm Gade Museum were very numerous; whilst at the University was deposited the typical collection of Fabricius. The Herbarium at the Botanic Garden, valuable for the types of Vahl and other early botanists, has been in modern times enriched by the extensive Mexican collection of Liebmann, the Brazilian ones of Lund and others; whilst CErsteds Central-American and Warming's Brazilian plants are also at Copenhagen, but whether public or private property I know not. The botanical and zoological gardens are of no great importance, but the biological publications are kept up with some spirit, especially the Transactions of the Royal Society of Science, Schiodte's continuation ofKroyer's "Tidsskrift,“and the “Videnskabelige Meddelelser“of the Natural History Society; and some of the authors have adopted a practice strongly recommended to those who write in languages not understood by the great mass of modern naturalists, that of giving short resumes of their papers in French. On the most important contributions to systematic zoology since those mentioned in my address of 1868, I have received the following memoranda:-Prof. Reinhardt, in publishing in the Transactions of the Royal Danish Academy (1869) nine posthumous plates, executed under the direction of the late Prof. Eschricht, illustrating the structure of various cetacea, has accompanied them with short explanations. Prof. Reinhardt has further published, in the “Videnskabelige Meddelelser“for 1870, a list of the birds inhabiting the Campos district of central Brazil; notes on the distribution, habits, and synonymy are copiously added; and the introductory remarks on the geographical distribution, &c., are very suggestive, and ought to be translated for the benefit of the friends of ornithology in England and elsewhere. The same "Videnskabelige Meddelelser “contains an essay by Dr. Liitken on the limits and classification of ganoid fishes, chiefly from a palseontological point of view, accompanied by a synopsis of the present condition, in systematical and geological respects, of that important branch of palseichthyology. In Mollusca, Dr. Bergh has published, in Krôyer's “Tidsskrift“for 1869, one of his elaborate, anatomical, and systematic monographs of the tribe Phillidese, with many plates, of which a detailed notice is given in the "Zoological Record,“vol. vi. p. 559. In insects, Prof. Schiôdte, in the same journal for 1869, has given an elaborate essay containing new facts and views on the morphology and system of the Rhynchota, analysed in the "Zoological Record,“vol. vi. p. 475. To Dr. Krabbe we owe the description of 123 species of tapeworms found in birds, an elaborate monograph accompanied by ten plates, and printed in the Transactions of the Royal Danish Society for 1869, with a French resume. (Noticed in "Zoological Record,“vol. vi. p. 633.) In Echinoderms, Dr. Liitken's valuable essays on various genera and species of Ophiuridce, recent and fossil, with a Latin synopsis of Ophiuridie and Eury-alidse, and a general French resume, forming the third part of his “Additamenta ad Históriám Ophiuridarum,“in the Transactions of the Royal Danish Society for 1869, have been analysed in the "Zoological Record,“vol, vi. pp. 369, 462, &c. No contribution to systematic botany of much importance has appeared in Denmark since those mentioned in my Address of 1868.
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Mr. Bentham's Anniversary Address to the Linnean Society . Nature 4, 150–152 (1871). https://doi.org/10.1038/004150a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/004150a0