Principles of Geology Part 52

Doubtless its microscopic sporules are everywhere present, ready to germinate on any spot where they can enjoy throughout the year the proper quant.i.ty of warmth, moisture, light, and other conditions essential to the species.

Almost every lichen brought home from the southern hemisphere by the antarctic expedition under Sir James Ross, amounting to no less than 200 species, was ascertained to be also an inhabitant of the northern hemisphere, and almost all of them European.

_Agency of rivers and currents._--In considering, in the next place, the instrumentality of the aqueous agents of dispersion, I cannot do better than cite the words of one of our ablest botanical writers. "The mountain stream or torrent," observes Keith, "washes down to the valley the seeds which may accidentally fall into it, or which it may happen to sweep from its banks when it suddenly overflows them. The broad and majestic river, winding along the extensive plain, and traversing the continents of the world, conveys to the distance of many hundreds of miles the seeds that may have vegetated at its source. Thus the southern sh.o.r.es of the Baltic are visited by seeds which grew in the interior of Germany, and the western sh.o.r.es of the Atlantic by seeds that have been generated in the interior of America."[855] Fruits, moreover, indigenous to America and the West Indies, such as that of the _Mimosa scandens_, the cashewnut and others, have been known to be drifted across the Atlantic by the Gulf stream, on the western coasts of Europe, in such a state that they might have vegetated had the climate and soil been favourable. Among these the _Guilandina Bonduc_, a leguminous plant, is particularly mentioned, as having been raised from a seed found on the west coast of Ireland.[856]

Sir Hans Sloane states, that several kinds of beans cast ash.o.r.e on the Orkney Isles, and Ireland, but none of which appear to have naturalized themselves, are derived from trees which grow in the West Indies, and many of them in Jamaica. He conjectures that they might have been conveyed by rivers into the sea, and then by the Gulf stream to greater distances, in the same manner as the sea-weed called _Lenticula marina_, or Sarga.s.so, which grows on the rocks about Jamaica, is known to be "carried by the winds and current towards the coast of Florida, and thence into the North American ocean, where it lies very thick on the surface of the sea."[857]

The absence of liquid matter in the composition of seeds renders them comparatively insensible to heat and cold, so that they may be carried without detriment through climates where the plants themselves would instantly perish. Such is their power of resisting the effects of heat, that Spallanzani mentions some seeds that germinated after having been boiled in water.[858] Sir John Herschel informs me that he has sown at the Cape of Good Hope the seeds of the _Acacia lophanta_ after they had remained for twelve hours in water of 140 Fahrenheit, and they germinated far more rapidly than unboiled seeds. He also states that an eminent botanist, Baron Ludwig, could not get the seeds of a species of cedar to grow at the Cape till they were thoroughly boiled.

When therefore, a strong gale, after blowing violently off the land for a time, dies away, and the seeds alight upon the surface of the waters, or wherever the ocean, by eating away the sea-cliffs, throws down into its waves plants which would never otherwise reach the sh.o.r.es, the tides and currents become active instruments in a.s.sisting the dissemination of almost all cla.s.ses of the vegetable kingdom. The panda.n.u.s and many other plants have been distributed in this way over the islands of the Pacific. I have before called attention (p. 618.) to the interesting fact that one-fifth of all the algae found in the antarctic regions in 1841-3, by Dr. J. Hooker, were of species common to the British seas. He has suggested that cold currents which prevail from Cape Horn to the equator, and are there met by other cold water, may by their direct influence, as well as by their temperature, facilitate the pa.s.sage of antarctic species to the Arctic Ocean. In like manner the migration of certain marine animals from the southern to the northern hemisphere may have been brought about by the same cause.

In a collection of six hundred plants from the neighborhood of the river Zaire, in Africa, Mr. Brown found that thirteen species were also met with on the opposite sh.o.r.es of Guiana and Brazil. He remarked that most of these plants were found only on the lower parts of the river Zaire, and were chiefly such as produced seeds capable of retaining their vitality a long time in the currents of the ocean. Dr. J. Hooker informs me that after an examination of a great many insular floras, he has found that no one of the large natural orders is so rich in species common to other countries, as the Leguminosae. The seeds in this order, which comprises the largest proportion of widely diffused littoral species, are better adapted than those of any other plants for water-carriage.

_The migration of plants aided by islands._--Islands, moreover, and even the smallest rocks, play an important part in aiding such migrations; for when seeds alight upon them from the atmosphere, or are thrown up by the surf, they often vegetate, and supply the winds and waves with a repet.i.tion of new and uninjured crops of fruit and seeds. These may afterwards pursue their course through the atmosphere, or along the surface of the sea, in the same direction. The number of plants found at any given time on an islet affords us no test whatever of the extent to which it may have co-operated towards this end, since a variety of species may first thrive there and then perish, and be followed by other chance-comers like themselves. If neither St. Helena nor Ascension have promoted the botanical intercourse between the Old and New Worlds, we may easily account for the fact by remembering that they are not only extremely minute and isolated spots, but are also bounded by lofty and precipitous sh.o.r.es without beaches, where the seeds of foreign species could readily establish themselves.

Currents and winds in the arctic regions drift along icebergs covered with an alluvial soil, on which herbs and pine-saplings are seen growing, which may often continue to vegetate on some distant sh.o.r.e where the ice-island is stranded.

_Dispersion of marine plants._--With respect to marine vegetation, the seeds, being in their native element, may remain immersed in water without injury for indefinite periods, so that there is no difficulty in conceiving the diffusion of species wherever uncongenial climates, contrary currents, and other causes do not interfere. All are familiar with the sight of the floating sea-weed,

"Flung from the rock on ocean's foam to sail, Where'er the surge may sweep, the tempest's breath prevail."

Remarkable acc.u.mulations of that species of sea-weed generally known as gulf-weed, or sarga.s.so, occur on each side of the equator in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans. Columbus and other navigators, who first encountered these banks of algae in the Northern Atlantic, compared them to vast inundated meadows, and state that they r.e.t.a.r.ded the progress of their vessels. The most extensive bank is a little west of the meridian of Fayal, one of the Azores, between lat.i.tudes 35 and 36: violent north-winds sometimes prevail in this s.p.a.ce, and drive the sea-weed to low lat.i.tudes, as far as the 24th or even the 20th degree.[859] Along the northern edge of the Gulf stream Dr. Hooker found _Fucus nodosus_, and _F. serratus_, which he traced all the way from lat. 36 N. to England.

The hollow pod-like receptacle in which the seeds of many algae are lodged, and the filaments attached to the seed-vessels of others, seem intended to give buoyancy; and I may observe that these hydrophytes are in general _proliferous_, so that the smallest fragment of a branch can be developed into a perfect plant. The seeds, moreover, of the greater number of species are enveloped with a mucous matter like that which surrounds the eggs of some fish, and which not only protects them from injury, but serves to attach them to floating bodies or to rocks.

_Agency of animals in the distribution of plants._--But we have as yet considered part only of the fertile resources of nature for conveying seeds to a distance from their place of growth. The various tribes of animals are busily engaged in furthering an object whence they derive such important advantages. Sometimes an express provision is found in the structure of seeds to enable them to adhere firmly by p.r.i.c.kles, hooks, and hairs, to the coats of animals, or feathers of the winged tribe, to which they remain attached for weeks, or even months, and are borne along into every region whither birds or quadrupeds may migrate.

Linnaeus enumerates fifty genera of plants, and the number now known to botanists is much greater, which are armed with hooks, by which, when ripe, they adhere to the coats of animals. Most of these vegetables, he remarks, require a soil enriched with dung. Few have failed to mark the locks of wool hanging on the thorn-bushes, wherever the sheep pa.s.s, and it is probable that the wolf or lion never give-chase to herbivorous animals without being unconsciously subservient to this part of the vegetable economy.

A deer has strayed from the herd when browsing on some rich pasture, when he is suddenly alarmed by the approach of his foe. He instantly takes to flight, das.h.i.+ng through many a thicket, and swimming across many a river and lake. The seeds of the herbs and shrubs which have adhered to his smoking flanks are washed off again by the waters. The th.o.r.n.y spray is torn off, and fixes itself in its hairy coat, until brushed off again in other thickets and copses. Even on the spot where the victim is devoured many of the seeds which he had swallowed immediately before the chase may be left on the ground uninjured, and ready to spring up in a new soil.

The pa.s.sage, indeed, of undigested seeds through the stomachs of animals is one of the most efficient causes of the dissemination of plants, and is of all others, perhaps, the most likely to be overlooked. Few are ignorant that a portion of the oats eaten by a horse preserve their germinating faculty in the dung. The fact of their being still nutritious is not lost on the sagacious rook. To many, says Linnaeus, it seems extraordinary, and something of a prodigy, that when a field is well tilled and sown with the best wheat, it frequently produces darnel or the wild oat, especially if it be manured with new dung; they do not consider that the fertility of the smaller seeds is not destroyed in the stomachs of animals.[860]

_Agency of birds._--Some birds of the order Pa.s.seres devour the seeds of plants in great quant.i.ties, which they eject again in very distant places, without destroying its faculty of vegetation: thus a flight of larks will fill the cleanest field with a great quant.i.ty of various kinds of plants, as the melilot trefoil (_Medicago lupulina_), and others whose seeds are so heavy that the wind is not able to scatter them to any distance.[861] In like manner, the blackbird and misselthrush, when they devour berries in too great quant.i.ties, are known to consign them to the earth undigested in their excrement.[862]

Pulpy fruits serve quadrupeds and birds as food, while their seeds, often hard and indigestible, pa.s.s uninjured through the intestines, and are deposited far from their original place of growth in a condition peculiarly fit for vegetation.[863] So well are the farmers, in some parts of England, aware of this fact, that when they desire to raise a quickset hedge in the shortest possible time, they feed turkeys with the haws of the common white-thorn (_Crataegus Oxyacantha_), and then sow the stones which are ejected in their excrement, whereby they gain an entire year in the growth of the plant.[864] Birds, when they pluck cherries, sloes, and haws, fly away with them to some convenient place; and when they have devoured the fruit, drop the stone into the ground. Captain Cook, in his account of the volcanic island of Tanna, one of the New Hebrides, which he visited in his second voyage, makes the following interesting observation:--"Mr. Forster, in his botanical excursion this day, shot a pigeon, in the craw of which was a wild nutmeg."[865] It is easy, therefore, to perceive, that birds in their migrations to great distances, and even across seas, may transport seeds to new isles and continents.

The sudden deaths to which great numbers of frugivorous birds are annually exposed must not be omitted as auxiliary to the transportation of seeds to new habitations. When the sea retires from the sh.o.r.e, and leaves fruits and seeds on the beach, or in the mud of estuaries, it might, by the returning tide, wash them away again, or destroy them by long immersion; but when they are gathered by land birds which frequent the sea side, or by waders and water-fowl, they are often borne inland; and if the bird to whose crop they have been consigned is killed, they may be left to grow up far from the sea. Let such an accident happen but once in a century, or a thousand years, it will be sufficient to spread many of the plants from one continent to another; for in estimating the activity of these causes, we must not consider whether they act slowly in relation to the period of our observation, but in reference to the duration of species in general.

Let us trace the operation of this cause in connection with others. A tempestuous wind bears the seeds of a plant many miles through the air, and then delivers them to the ocean; the oceanic current drifts them to a distant continent; by the fall of the tide they become the food of numerous birds, and one of these is seized by a hawk or eagle, which, soaring across hill and dale to a place of retreat, leaves, after devouring its prey, the unpalatable seeds to spring up and flourish in a new soil.

The machinery before adverted to, is so capable of disseminating seeds over almost unbounded s.p.a.ces, that were we more intimately acquainted with the economy of nature, we might probably explain all the instances which occur of the aberration of plants to great distances from their native countries. The real difficulty which must present itself to every one who contemplates the present geographical distribution of species, is the small number of exceptions to the rule of the non-intermixture of different groups of plants. Why have they not, supposing them to have been ever so distinct originally, become more blended and confounded together in the lapse of ages?

_Agency of man in the dispersion of plants._--But in addition to all the agents already enumerated as instrumental in diffusing plants over the globe, we have still to consider man--one of the most important of all.

He transports with him, into every region, the vegetables which he cultivates for his wants, and is the involuntary means of spreading a still greater number which are useless to him, or even noxious. "When the introduction of cultivated plants," says De Candolle, "is of recent date, there is no difficulty in tracing their origin; but when it is of high antiquity, we are often ignorant of the true country of the plants on which we feed. No one contests the American origin of the maize or the potatoe; nor the origin, in the Old World, of the coffee-tree, and of wheat. But there are certain objects of culture, of very ancient date, between the tropics, such for example as the banana, of which the origin cannot be verified. Armies, in modern times, have been known to carry, in all directions, grain and cultivated vegetables from one extremity of Europe to the other; and thus have shown us how, in more ancient times, the conquests of Alexander, the distant expeditions of the Romans, and afterwards the crusades, may have transported many plants from one part of the world to the other."[866]

But, besides the plants used in agriculture, the numbers which have been naturalized by accident, or which man has spread unintentionally, is considerable. One of our old authors, Josselyn, gives a catalogue of such plants as had, in his time, sprung up in the colony since the English planted and kept cattle in New England. They were two-and-twenty in number. The common nettle was the first which the settlers noticed; and the plantain was called by the Indians "Englishman's foot," as if it sprung from their footsteps.[867]

"We have introduced every where," observes De Candolle, "some weeds which grow among our various kinds of wheat, and which have been received, perhaps, originally from Asia along with them. Thus, together with the Barbary wheat, the inhabitants of the south of Europe have sown, for many ages, the plants of Algiers and Tunis. With the wools and cottons of the East, or of Barbary, there are often brought into France the grains of exotic plants, some of which naturalize themselves. Of this I will cite a striking example. There is, at the gate of Montpellier, a meadow set apart for drying foreign wool, _after it has been washed_. There hardly pa.s.ses a year without foreign plants being found naturalized in this drying-ground. I have gathered there _Centaurea parviflora_, _Psoralea palaestina_, and _Hyperic.u.m crispum_."

This fact is not only ill.u.s.trative of the aid which man lends inadvertently to the propagation of plants, but it also demonstrates the multiplicity of seeds which are borne about in the woolly and hairy coats of wild animals.

The same botanist mentions instances of plants naturalized in seaports by the ballast of s.h.i.+ps; and several examples of others which have spread through Europe from botanical gardens, so as to have become more common than many indigenous species.

It is scarcely a century, says Linnaeus, since the Canadian erigeron, or flea-bane, was brought from America to the botanical garden at Paris; and already the seeds have been carried by the winds so that it is diffused over France, the British islands, Italy, Sicily, Holland, and Germany.[868] Several others are mentioned by the Swedish naturalist, as having been dispersed by similar means. The common thorn-apple (_Datura Stramonium_), observes Willdenow, now grows as a noxious weed throughout all Europe, with the exception of Sweden, Lapland and Russia. It came from the East Indies and Abyssinia to us, and was thus universally spread by certain quacks, who used its seeds as an emetic.[869] The same plant is now abundant throughout the greater part of the United States, along road-sides and about farm-yards. The yellow monkey-flower, _Mimulus luteus_, a plant from the north-west region of America, has now established itself in various parts of England, and is spreading rapidly.

In hot and ill-cultivated countries, such naturalization takes place more easily. Thus the _Chenopodium ambrosioides_, sown by Mr. Burch.e.l.l on a point of St. Helena, multiplied so fast in four years as to become one of the commonest weeds in the island, and it has maintained its ground ever since 1845.[870]

The most remarkable proof, says De Candolle, of the extent to which man is unconsciously the instrument of dispersing and naturalizing species, is found in the fact, that in New Holland, America, and the Cape of Good Hope, the aboriginal European species exceed in number all the others which have come from any distant regions; so that, in this instance, the influence of man has surpa.s.sed that of all the other causes which tend to disseminate plants to remote districts. Of nearly 1600 British flowering plants, it is supposed that about 300 species are naturalized; but a large proportion of these would perish with the discontinuance of agriculture.

Although we are but slightly acquainted, as yet, with the extent of our instrumentality in naturalizing species, yet the facts ascertained afford no small reason to suspect that the number which we introduce unintentionally exceeds all those transported by design. Nor is it unnatural to suppose that the functions, which the inferior beings, extirpated by man, once discharged in the economy of nature, should devolve upon the human race. If we drive many birds of pa.s.sage from different countries, we are probably required to fulfil their office of carrying seeds, eggs of fish, insects, mollusks, and other creatures, to distant regions: if we extirpate quadrupeds, we must replace them not merely as consumers of the animal and vegetable substances which they devour, but as disseminators of plants, and of the inferior cla.s.ses of the animal kingdom. I do not mean to insinuate that the very same changes which man brings about, would have taken place by means of the agency of other species, but merely that he supersedes a certain number of agents; and so far as he disperses plants unintentionally, or against his will, his intervention is strictly a.n.a.logous to that of the species so extirpated.

I may observe, moreover, that if, at former periods, the animals inhabiting any given district have been partially altered by the extinction of some species, and the introduction of others, whether by new creations or by immigration, a change must have taken place in regard to the particular plants conveyed about with them to foreign countries. As, for example, when one set of migratory birds is subst.i.tuted for another, the countries from and to which seeds are transported are immediately changed. Vicissitudes, therefore, a.n.a.logous to those which man has occasioned, may have previously attended the springing up of new relations between species in the vegetable and animal worlds.

It may also be remarked, that if man is the most active agent in enlarging, so also is he in circ.u.mscribing the geographical boundaries of particular plants. He promotes the migration of some, he r.e.t.a.r.ds that of other species; so that, while in many respects he appears to be exerting his power to blend and confound the various provinces of indigenous species, he is, in other ways, instrumental in obstructing the fusion into one group of the inhabitants of contiguous provinces.

Thus, for example, when two botanical regions exist in the same great continent, such as _the European region_, comprehending the central parts of Europe, and those surrounding the Mediterranean, and _the Oriental region_, as it has been termed, embracing the countries adjoining the Black Sea and the Caspian, the interposition between these of thousands of square miles of cultivated lands, opposes a new and powerful barrier against the mutual interchange of indigenous plants.

Botanists are well aware that garden plants naturalize and diffuse themselves with great facility in comparatively unreclaimed countries, but spread themselves slowly and with difficulty in districts highly cultivated. There are many obvious causes for this difference; by drainage and culture the natural variety of stations is diminished, and those stray individuals by which the pa.s.sage of a species from one fit station to another is effected, are no sooner detected by the agriculturist, than they are uprooted as weeds. The larger shrubs and trees, in particular, can scarcely ever escape observation, when they have attained a certain size, and will rarely fail to be cut down if unprofitable.

The same observations are applicable to the interchange of the insects, birds, and quadrupeds of two regions situated like those above alluded to. No beasts of prey are permitted to make their way across the intervening arable tracts. Many birds, and hundreds of insects, which would have found some palatable food amongst the various herbs and trees of the primeval wilderness, are unable to subsist on the olive, the vine, the wheat, and a few trees and gra.s.ses favored by man. In addition, therefore, to his direct intervention, man, in this case, operates indirectly to impede the dissemination of plants, by intercepting the migration of animals, many of which would otherwise have been active in transporting seeds from one province to another.

Whether, in the vegetable kingdom, the influence of man will tend, after a considerable lapse of ages, to render the geographical range of _species in general_ more extended, as De Candolle seems to antic.i.p.ate, or whether the compensating agency above alluded to will not counterbalance the exceptions caused by our naturalizations, admits at least of some doubt. In the attempt to form an estimate on this subject, we must be careful not to underrate, or almost overlook, as some appear to have done, the influence of man in checking the diffusion of plants, and restricting their distribution to narrower limits.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

LAWS WHICH REGULATE THE GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF SPECIES--_continued_.

Geographical distribution of animals--Buffon on specific distinctness of quadrupeds of Old and New World--Doctrine of "natural barriers"--Different regions of indigenous mammalia--Europe--Africa--India, and Indian Archipelago--Australia--North and South America--Quadrupeds in islands--Range of the Cetacea--Dispersion of quadrupeds--Their powers of swimming--Migratory instincts--Drifting of animals on ice-floes--On floating islands of drift-timber--Migrations of Cetacea--Habitations of birds--Their migrations and facilities of diffusion--Distribution of reptiles, and their power of dissemination.

_Geographical distribution of animals._--Although in speculating on "philosophical possibilities," said Buffon, "the same temperature might have been expected, all other circ.u.mstances being equal, to produce the same beings in different parts of the globe, both in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, yet it is an undoubted fact, that when America was discovered, its indigenous quadrupeds were all dissimilar to those previously known in the Old World. The elephant, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, the camelopard, the camel, the dromedary, the buffalo, the horse, the a.s.s, the lion, the tiger, the apes, the baboons, and a number of other mammalia, were nowhere to be met with on the new continent; while in the old, the American species, of the same great cla.s.s, were nowhere to be seen--the tapir, the lama, the pecari, the jaguar, the couguar, the agouti, the paca, the coati, and the sloth."

These phenomena, although few in number relatively to the whole animate creation, were so striking and so positive in their nature, that the great French naturalist caught sight at once of a general law in the geographical distribution of organic beings, namely, the limitation of groups of distinct species to regions separated from the rest of the globe by certain natural barriers. It was, therefore, in a truly philosophical spirit that, relying on the clearness of the evidence obtained respecting the larger quadrupeds, he ventured to call in question the identifications announced by some contemporary naturalists of species of animals said to be common to the southern extremities of America and Africa.[871]

The migration of quadrupeds from one part of the globe to another, observes Dr. Prichard, is prevented by uncongenial climates and the branches of the ocean which intersect continents. "Hence, by a reference to the geographical site of countries, we may divide the earth into a certain number of regions fitted to become the abodes of particular groups of animals, and we shall find, on inquiry, that each of these provinces, thus conjecturally marked out, is actually inhabited by a distinct nation of quadrupeds."[872] It will be observed that the language of Buffon respecting "natural barriers," which has since been so popular, would be wholly without meaning if the geographical distribution of organic beings had not led naturalists to adopt very generally _the doctrine of specific centres_, or, in other words, to believe that each species, whether of plant or animal, originated in a single birth-place. Reject this view, and the fact that not a single native quadruped is common to Australia, the Cape of Good Hope, and South America, can in no ways be explained by adverting to the wide extent of intervening ocean, or to the sterile deserts, or the great heat or cold of the climates, through which each species must have pa.s.sed, before it could migrate from one of those distant regions to another. It might fairly be asked of one who talked of impa.s.sable barriers, why the same kangaroos, rhinoceroses, or lamas, should not have been created simultaneously in Australia, Africa, and South America! The horse, the ox, and the dog, although foreign to these countries until introduced by man, are now able to support themselves there in a wild state, and we can scarcely doubt that many of the quadrupeds at present peculiar to Australia, Africa, and South America, might have continued in like manner to inhabit each of the three continents had they been indigenous or could they once have got a footing there as new colonists.

At the same time every zoologist will be willing to concede, that even if the departure of each species from a single centre had not appeared to be part of the plan of Nature, the range of species in general must have become limited, under the influence of a variety of causes, especially in the cla.s.s of terrestrial mammalia. Scarcely any one of these could be expected to retain as fair a claim to the t.i.tle of cosmopolite as man, although even the human race, fitted as it is by its bodily const.i.tution and intellectual resources to spread very widely over the earth, is far from being strictly cosmopolite. It is excluded both from the arctic and antarctic circles, from many a wide desert and the summits of many mountain-chains; and lastly, from three-fourths of the globe covered by water, where there are large areas very prolific in animal life, even in the highest order of the vertebrate cla.s.s. But the _habitations_ of species are, as before stated, in reference to plants (see above, p. 614), circ.u.mscribed by causes different from those which determine their _stations_, and these causes are clearly connected with the time and place of the original creation of each species.

As the names and characters of land quadrupeds are much better known to the general reader than those of other great families of the animal kingdom, I shall select this cla.s.s to exemplify the zoological provinces into which species are divisible, confining myself, however, to those facts which may help to elucidate some principle, or rule apparently followed by the Author of Nature, in regard to that "mystery of mysteries," the first peopling of the earth with living beings.[873]

First, then, the _European region_ comprehends, besides Europe, the borders of the Mediterranean, and even the north of Africa, and extends into Asia, beyond the Oural mountains and the Caspian. Although the species are almost all peculiar, the number of characteristic _genera_ is remarkably small. The bear, the fox, the hare, the rabbit, the deer, and almost every European form is found equally in several of the other large provinces of mammalia, where the species are distinct. Even the mole (_Talpa_), although confined to the northern parts of the old world, ranges eastwards, as far as the Himalaya mountains.

2dly. The _African_ Fauna, on the other hand, is singularly rich in generic forms, not met with in a living state in any other region. The hippopotamus, for example, of which two very distinct species are known, the giraffe, the Chimpanzee, the blue-faced baboon, the four-fingered monkeys (_Colubus_), many carnivora, such as _Proteles_, allied to the hyaena, and a mult.i.tude of other forms, are exclusively African. A few of the species inhabiting the northern confines of this continent, such as the dromedary, lion, and jackall, are also common to Asia; and a much larger number of _forms_ belong equally to the great Asiatic province, the species being distinct. The elephant, for example, of Africa is smaller, has a rounder head, and larger ears than the Indian one, and has only three instead of four nails on each hind foot. In like manner, not one of three African species of Rhinoceros agrees with one of the three Indian kinds.

3dly. The _Southern_ region of _Africa_, where that continent extends into the temperate zone, const.i.tutes another separate zoological province, surrounded as it is on three sides by the ocean, and cut off from the countries of milder climate in the northern hemisphere, by the intervening torrid zone. In many instances, this region contains the same genera which are found in temperate climates to the northward of the line: but then the southern are different from the northern species.

Thus, in the south we find the quagga and the zebra; in the north, the horse, the a.s.s, and the jiggetai of Asia.