8o2 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE PHYSICAL GEOGEAPHY OF THE WEST INDIES. 



Bt F. L. OSWALD. 

 I.— THE FAUNA OF THE ANTILLES: MAMMALS. 



THE study of the geographical distribution of plants and animals 

 has revealed facts almost as enigmatical as the origin of life itself. 

 "Water barriers, as broad as that of the Atlantic, have not prevented 

 the spontaneous spread of some species, while others limit their 

 habitat to narrowly circumscribed though not geographically isolated 

 regions. 



Tapirs are found both in the Amazon Valley and on the Malay 

 Peninsula; the brook trout of southern New Zealand are identical 

 with those of the Austrian Alps. Oaks and Ericacea (heather plants) 

 cover northern Europe from the mouth of the Seine to the sources of 

 the Ural; then suddenly cease, and are not found anywhere in the 

 vast Siberian territories, with a north-to-south range rivaling that of 

 all British North America. 



But still more remarkable is the zoological contrast of such close- 

 neighborhood countries as Africa and Madagascar, or Central Amer- 

 ica and the West Indian archipelago. The Madagascar virgin woods 

 harbor no lions, leopards, hyenas, or baboons, but boast not less than 

 thirty-five species of mammals unknown to the African continent, 

 and twenty-six found nowhere else in the world. 



Of a dozen different kinds of deer, abundant in North America 

 as well as in Asia and Europe, not a single species has found its way 

 to the West Indies. The fine mountain meadows of Hayti have 

 originated no antelopes, no wild sheep or wild goats. 



In the Cuban sierras, towering to a height of 8,300 feet, there 

 are no hill foxes. There are caverns — subterranean labyrinths with 

 countless ramifications, some of them — but no cave bears or badgers, 

 no marmots or weasels even, nor one of the numerous weasel-like crea- 

 tures clambering about the rock clefts of Mexico. The magnificent 

 coast forests of the Antilles produce wild-growing nuts enough to 

 freight a thousand schooners every year, but — almost incredible to 

 say — the explorers of sixteen generations have failed to discover a 

 6ingle species of squirrels. 



The Old- World tribes of our tree-climbing relatives are so totally 

 different from those of the American tropics that Humboldt's travel- 

 ing companion, Bonplant, renounced the theory of a unitary center 

 of creation (or evolution), and maintained that South America must 

 have made a separate though unsuccessful attempt to rise from 

 lemurs to manlike apes and men. Of such as they are, Brazil alone 

 has forty-eight species of monkeys, and Venezuela at least thirty. 



