ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF MAMMALIA IN EUROPE. 213 
course, self-evident. For the majority of wild animals there 
is little or no demand in the market; their increase or 
decrease is, therefore, a matter of indifference except to 
naturalists and those whose personal property is directly 
concerned. Besides, the number of specimens annually 
killed or captured alive furnishes us with no correct esti- 
mate of the proportion which still survives. It frequently 
happens that a species suddenly reappears in a locality in 
which it was supposed to be extinct. It is, therefore, 
evident that even in Europe, where the opportunities for 
scientific observation are incomparably greater than in any 
other quarter of the globe, an exact account of the distribu- 
tion of the Mammalia cannot be given. 
It is scarcely necessary to call attention to the fact that 
no distinct faunal region is enclosed within the arbitrary 
boundaries of our little continent. Considered geographi- 
cally, Europe, notwithstanding its paramount political 
importance, is but a remote corner of Asia; considered 
zoographically, it does not even constitute an independent 
division of the great Palearctic Region. The Palearctic 
Region includes not only the whole of Europe, but Northern 
and Central Asia, as well as Africa as far south as the 
Sahara and the first cataract of the Nile. This immense 
territory, stretching from the Arctic Ocean to the Tropic of 
Cancer, and from Ireland to the eastern extremities of 
Continental Asia and Japan, naturally possesses a vast 
diversity of climate and soil, and among its mammals 
appear the ape and the lemming, the hyena and the 
wolverine, the lion and the polar bear, the camel and the 
reindeer. On its south-western frontier the gazelle trips 
over the red sand, and its skin, like that of the enemies it 
dreads—the Arab, the lion, the caracal, the jackal—wears the ~ 
very tint of the burning desert ; on its remote eastern shore 
the hirsute savage of the Hokkaido stands shivering in the 
sleet, lurking for the sea-otter as it comes to seek shelter 
under the ice-bound cliffs which resist the tempest-tossed 
breakers of the North Pacific. 
But by far the most remarkable characteristic of this 
region is the distribution of the human race within its 
bounds. At one extremity lies China, with its unnumbered 
