82 
that none of the higher animals at present existing, can boast 
of any great antiquity; but zoological heralds and pedigree- 
hunters searching in these volumes, are able to trace the 
descent of existing animals, through creatures differing more and 
more from them in direct relation to their remoteness from them 
in time, to more generalized types. These types represent as it 
were the founders of families, whose present representatives have 
specialized on divergent lines until they differ as much from 
one another, perhaps, as each does from the remote ancestor of 
them all, whose chronicles are written in the stone tables of long 
dead worlds. 
The older the family the greater have been the opportunities 
in the past for its members to spread over the habitable world. 
We must remember that not only have land connections formed 
bridges between continents now divided by narrow seas, but that 
climates have greatly varied. 
The great Cat family is one of some antiquity. Though it has 
lost some of its ancient prestige, members of the genus Felis, 
a section only of the whole family, are to be found on all the 
Continents except Australia. 
The seasonal range of migratory birds is very great. The 
Cuckoo, whose summer range extends over temperate Hurope 
and the greater part of Asia, is found in winter in the Phillipines, 
Natal, Burma, and Ceylon. The Sedge Warbler migrates in 
winter as far as South Africa, and our Swallow to all-parts of India 
and Africa, and in the nesting season it is found almost up to 
the Arctic Circle. But the journeys of these birds were far sur- 
passed by those of some waders. Some species of birds are 
practically cosmopolitan. 
A cousideration of the distribution of animals and plants, at 
the present period of the world’s history, has led Naturalists to 
divide the earth into six primary regions, characterized by the 
similarity of their animal and plant inhabitants ; and the most 
important region, Australasian, includes Australia, New Zealand, 
New Guinea, and other of the islands of the Malay Archipelago 
and the islands of the Pacific. Europe, politically the most im- 
portant continent, is, judged by its fauna and flora, but a small 
part of the great Hurasiatic iand-mass. Its association by 
Naturalists with the whole of Asia north of the Himalayas, and 
with the part of Africa north of the Sahara, in one of the 
primary regions—Palaearctic—is justified by the fact that there 
is a greater similarity between the animals and plants of the 
whole region than there is between the animals and plants of any 
part of Africa south of the Sahara, or of Asia south of the Hima- 
layas. In the two countries at the western and eastern 
extremities of the Palaearctic region—Great Britain and Japan 
