10 Geographical Distribution of Animals. 



Without entering fully into this question, we may as well 

 state that we have been gradually led to the conclusion, that 

 most animals and plants must have originated primitively over 

 the whole extent of their natural distribution. We mean to 

 say that, for instance, lions, which occur over almost the 

 whole of Africa, over extensive parts of Southern Asia, and 

 were formerly found even over Asia-Minor and Greece, must 

 have originated primitively over the whole range of these 

 limits of their distribution. We are led to these conclusions 

 by the very fact, that the lions of the East Indies differ some- 

 what from those of Northern Africa; these, again, differ 

 from those of Senegal. It seems more natural to suppose 

 that they were thus distributed over such wide districts, and 

 endowed with particular characteristics in each, than to 

 assume that they constituted as many species ; or to believe 

 that, created anywhere in this circle of distribution, they have 

 gradually been modified to their present differences in conse- 

 quence of their migration. We admit these differences to be 

 primitive and contemporaneous, from the fact, that there are 

 other animals of different genera extending over the same 

 tracts of land which have different representatives in each, 

 circumscribed within narrower bounds, and this particular 

 combination in each special district of the wider circle covered 

 by the lion, seems, in our opinion, the strongest argument in 

 favour of .the view, that the particular districts of distribution 

 have been primitively ascribed, with definite limits, to each 

 species. Why should the antelopes north of the Cape of 

 Good Hope differ from those of Arabia, or those of the Sene- 

 gal, or those of the Atlas, or those of the East Indies, if 

 they were not primitively adapted with their special modifi- 

 cations to those districts, when we see the lion cover the whole 

 range ? And why should the varieties we notice among the 

 lions within these boundaries not be primitive, though not 

 constituting distinct species, when we see the herbivorous 

 species of the same genus differ from one district to another ? 

 And why should the differences in that one species of lion be 

 the result of changes in its primitive character, arising from its 

 distribution into new districts, when we see that the antelopes 

 are at once fixed as distinct species over the same ground ? 



