ON NORTH AMERICAN ZOOLOGY. 223 



ary of the Columbia, resembles p. Planeri in its fringed lips, 

 and Jluviatilis in the strength and form of its teeth, but not in 

 their arrangement. Lampreys exist in the Mackenzie river 

 which joins the Arctic sea in the 68th parallel. 



The preceding report occupies a greater portion of the Soci- 

 ty's valuable volume than I could have wished, but I was unable 

 to compress it fm-ther without departing entirely from the plan 

 that I have adopted. The list of species, though they might 

 have been omitted had the paper referred only to a countiy like 

 Europe, whose natural productions are fully enumerated in ac- 

 cessible treatises, are in fact essential to a view of the present 

 state of our knowledge of the ferine inhabitants of a continent 

 which confessedly nourishes many species still undescribed j 

 and being moreover the data for our remarks on the geographical 

 distribution of animal forms, they are necessary to enable the 

 naturalist to judge of the value of the statements collected from 

 the various authors referred to, and of the opinions offered upon 

 them. The comparison between the faxince of North America 

 and Europe which runs throughout the paper, contributes to 

 indicate not only the variations of animal life in different loca- 

 lities, and in different circumstances, under the same parallels of 

 latitude, but also, though more obscurely and merely by analogy, 

 the tribes of animals of which new species will be most pro- 

 bably hereafter detected in North America. 



Zoology, as Cuvier has remarked, is now and must continue 

 to be for many years, a science of observation only, and not of 

 calculation ; and no general principles hitherto established will 

 enable us to say what are the aboriginal inhabitants of any 

 quarter of the world. It seemed therefore hopeless to attempt 

 to elicit the laws of the distribution of animal life from results 

 yielded by a fauna so very imperfectly investigated as that of 

 North America ; consequently in the preceding report, the 

 ranges of the species have been generally stated, as recorded by 

 observers, and without any reference to the opinions which have 

 been heretofore advanced by theoretical writers. Buffon ha- 

 zarded the remark that none of the animals of the Old World 

 exist in the New, except the few which are capable of propagating 

 in the high northern latitudes. Temminck adduces circum- 

 stances which favour a modern opinion almost directly opposed 

 to Buffon's ; namely, that all the genera which people the earth 

 (a small number belonging to the polar regions only excepted) 

 are to be found in the equatorial zone, or at least within the 

 tropics ; and that the genera are spread abroad by means of 

 analogues or species possessing exactly similar generic cha- 



