CHAPTER IV. 
ON ZOOLOGICAL REGIONS. 
To the older school of Naturalists the native country of an animal 
was of little importance, except in as far as climates differed. 
Animals were supposed to be specially adapted to live in certain 
zones or under certain physical conditions, and it was hardly 
recognised that apart from these conditions there was any 
influence in locality which could materially affect them. It 
was believed that, while the animals of tropical, temperate, and 
arctic climates, essentially differed; those of the tropics were 
essentially alike all over the world. A group of animals was 
said to inhabit the “Indies;” and important differences of 
structure were often overlooked from the idea, that creatures 
equally adapted to live in hot countries and with certain 
general resemblances, would naturally be related to each other. 
Thus the Toucans and Hornbills, the Humming-Birds and Sun- 
Birds, and even the Tapirs and the Elephants, came to be 
popularly associated as slightly modified varieties of tropical 
forms of life; while to naturalists, who were acquainted with 
the essential differences of structure, it was a never-failing 
source of surprise, that under climate$ and conditions so 
apparently identical, such strangely divergent forms should 
be produced. 
.To the modern naturalist, on the other hand, the native 
country (or “habitat” as it is technically termed) of an animal 
