THE REGIONS OF VEGETATION. SiS 
tribution of plants. But, even respecting these, there is 
such diversity of opinion, that we hesitate which to follow. 
Man has been regarded by some to display three varieties, 
each possessing highly distinctive characters; others have 
encreased these to five, and maintain that this number is the 
most natural; and I have no doubt that those travellers, who 
have visited many different nations, will be disposed to 
assert that they are either far more numerous, or that there 
is but one, modified by the circumstances of food, climate, soil, 
dress, and customs. Some similar attempts have likewise 
been made to define a number of climates or regions for the 
animal kingdom, each possessed of peculiar and distinctive 
features. 
The earliest of these theories was promulgated by Fabri- 
cius, but was confined to insects. He distributed the surface 
ofthe globe into eight divisions; 1st, The Indian. 2nd, 
Egyptian. 3rd, Southern. 4th, Mediterranean. 5th, 
Northern. 6th, Oriental. 7th, Occidental. Sth, Alpine. 
Many objections were soon urged against this, which is not 
surprising, when the Indian region embraced the tropies of 
both the Old and New World, and the seventh included North 
America, Japan, and China. Latreille was one of the fore- 
most to criticise it, and advanced some very sound objections ; 
but, strangely enough, subsequently framed a classification 
still more questionable. His climates were unflinchingly cir- 
cumscribed by degrees of latitude and longitude, each having 
12° of the former and 24° of the latter. As the land does not 
extend so far in the southern hemisphere as in the northern, 
he assigned it only five climates of latitude, but the northern 
had seven, reaching to 84° N. L. As each belt of latitude was 
to be divided at every 24th degree of longitude, an entire cir- 
cle ofthe globe would comprehend of itself fifteen climates, and 
thus the aggregate of the whole be very considerable, even 
after an allowance for the intervening seas. A theory so 
decidedly artificial was likely to have few advocates beyond 
its proposer. Another method was framed by Dr. Pritchard, 
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