MAMMALS OF EURASIA. 59 



have already been indicated. In the northwest and west it em- 

 braces Spitzbergen and Iceland, and the numerous larger and smaller 

 islands which lie between these and the mainland. 



Although this division has an east and west extent not far short 

 of half the circumference of the globe, yet so great is its zoological 

 unity ' ' that the majority of the genera of animals in countries so 

 far removed as Great Britain and Northern Japan are identical. 

 Throughout its northern half the animal productions of the Palae- 

 arctic region are very uniform, except that the vast elevated desert 

 regions of Central Asia possess some characteristic forms ; but in 

 its southern portion we find a warm district at each extremity with 

 somewhat contrasted features." 25 



Zoology of the Eurasiatic Region. Although the Eurasiatic 

 fauna comprises representatives of thirty distinct families of Mam- 

 malia, not a single one of these is absolutely confined, or is pecu- 

 liar, to that region. Perhaps on the whole its most distinctive 

 group of quadrupeds is that of the sheep and goats, forming the 

 sub-family Caprinae of the Bovidae (oxen). There are represented 

 in this group some twenty-two or twenty-three species (belonging 

 to the genera Capra and Ovibos}, which, with four or five excep- 

 tions, are either absolutely confined within the limits of the re- 

 gion, or just pass beyond it. The genus Capra, comprising the 

 goats and ibexes on one side, and the sheep on the other, have 

 an outlying Old World representative a goat in the ' ' Warrya- 

 to " (Capra hylocrius) of the Neilgherries (Oriental realm), and an- 

 other a sheep, the moufflon (C. [Ovis] musirnon) in the larger 

 islands (Corsica, Sardinia, Crete) of the Mediterranean, and the 

 mountains of Greece and Persia. A species of ibex (C. beden) 

 inhabits the elevated districts of Egypt, Syria, and Sinai, and an- 

 other (C. Valie), possibly only a variety of the preceding, the high- 

 lands of Abyssinia, just within the boundaries of the Ethiopian 

 realm. The two American representatives of the family, the Rocky 

 Mountain big-horn (C. [Ovis] montana) and the musk-ox (Ovibos 

 moschatus), are both absolutely confined to the Holarctic tract. 

 One, at least, of the two generally recognised species of camel, 

 the Bactrian or two-humped species (Camelus Bactrianus), is at the 

 present time entirely, or almost entirely, restricted to the Eur- 

 asiatic region, and not unlikely the dromedary (C. dromedarius) 

 was also at one time indigenous to it, although from the long- 



