THE JAMAICA SEAL. 



In these days of universal education, most persons 

 in visiting a zoological garden or museum can imagine 

 the natural surroundings of at least the commoner 

 animals. One pictures, for example, the silvery gibbon 

 of Java shouting in monkey glee as it swings long- 

 armed from bough to bough ; the polar bear wachingan 

 ice crack for seals as a cat ambushes a hole for mice ; 

 the Greenland walruses, white-tusked and blear-eyed, 

 lying in a fighting, biting, roaring mass on the deso- 

 late floes ; or a herd of zebras leaving a water-hole 

 after drinking, and brushing off the locusts clinging 

 to the reeds as they thunder by in a cloud of dust. 

 To each animal type one assigns a given habitat, the 

 usurpation of which by another would seem a trans- 

 gression of the harmony of Nature. 



Nevertheless, one occasionally finds instances of 

 animals normally occupying distributional areas 

 which to preconceived ideas seem most inappro- 

 priate, if not actually unsuited to them. Thus the 

 leopard is as European as the wolf or brown bear, 

 since it occurs on the northern side of the Caucasus ; 

 the porcupines, a group characteristic of Africa and 

 Asia, are also represented in Italy and Greece ; the 

 golden-bellied water-rat — a true rodent — inhabits 

 that marsupial stronghold, Australia. One asso- 

 ciates seals with the Arctic and Antarctic reofions, 



