210 GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMALS. 



influences. We must, on the contrary, see in it the realiza- 

 tion of a plan wisely designed, the work of a Supreme Intel- 

 ligence who created, at the beginning, each species of ani- 

 mal at the place, and for the place, which it inhabits. To 

 each species has been assigned a limit which it has no dis- 

 position to overstep, so long as it remains in a wild state. 

 Only those animals which have been subjected to the yoke 

 of man, or whose subsistence is dependent on man's social 

 habits, are exceptions to this rule. 



446. As the human race has extended over the surface 

 of the earth, man has more or less modified the animal popu- 

 lation of different regions, either by exterminating certain 

 species, or by introducing others with which he desires to be 

 more intimately associated the domestic animals. Thus, 

 the dog is found wherever we know of the presence of man. 

 The horse, originally from Asia, was introduced into Ameri- 

 ca by the Spaniards ; where it has thriven so well, that it 

 is found wild, in innumerable herds, over the Pampas of 

 South America, and the prairies of the West. In like 

 manner, the domestic ox became wild in South America. 

 Many less welcome animals have followed man in his pere- 

 grinations ; as, for example, the rat and the mouse, as well 

 as a multitude of insects, such as the house-fly, the cock- 

 roach, and others which are attached to certain species of 

 plants, as the white butterfly, the Hessian fly, &c. The 

 honey-bee, also, has been imported from Europe. 



447. Among the species which have disappeared, under 

 the influence of man, we may mention the Dodo, a pecu- 

 liar species of bird which once inhabited the Mauritius, 

 some remains of which are preserved in the British and 

 Ashmolean Museums ; also a large cetacean of the north, 

 (Rytina Stelleri^ formerly inhabiting the coasts of Behring's 

 Straits, and which has not been seen since 1768. Accord- 

 ing to all appearances, we must also count among these the 



