nfthc. Northern Regions. 145 



The botanist will smile at an interrogatory implying doubt 

 whether palms are limited to warm, and pines to cold climates. 

 Unless Dr Fleming had exhibited in himself an instance to the 

 contrary, I should have supposed every geologist would have 

 given a similar reception to the querist. The imperfect treatises 

 on the subject, which I have been in the habit of perusing, ha- 

 ving betrayed me into the idea that it was universally admitted 

 that most of the genera of lamelliferous polyparia*; that very 

 manv genera of testacea ; that most of the large reptile tribes, 

 crocodiles, turtles, and many others, were so limited ; and, with 

 regard to the particular races on which Dr Fleming dwells in 

 his memoir, elephants, rhinoceroses, and hyaenas, I had hitherto 

 been led by the same blind guides to conceive that the law of 

 climate, affecting their distribution, was, in point of fact, as far 

 as we know any thing of it, from the actual state of things, a 

 law affecting genera as well as species. 



To me Dr Fleming's argument appears to resolve itself into 

 this, "■' Because some genera are not limited, therefore no genera 

 are so limited." Or, to put it in another form, " Because, in 

 certain widely diffused genera, you cannot argue from the habits 

 of some of the congenerous species to the rest, therefore you 

 cannot argue thus in any genera whatsoever •\. The narrow 



• Of the known recent lamelliferou.s jjolypana, tlie genera, with two 

 .straggling exceptions, are stated, b}- tlie best authors, to be inhabitants of 

 warm climates. Lamarcic, speaking of Sarcinula org.iniim (sarcinula being 

 the second genus of the first section of the lamelliferous division), says, " Ha- 

 bite dans la Mer Rouge. On la trouve fossile sur les cotes de la Mer Baltique." 

 — Antmaux sans vertebres, toni. ii. p. 223. 



■}■ I cannot pass, without notice, one of Dr Fleming's illustrations, where 

 he taxes Cuvier witli inaccuracy (assuredly using sufficient philosophical bold- 

 ness), because that writer has said you might infer from thebisulcous hoof the 

 ruminating habits of the animal possessing it. Dr Fleming adduces the pig as 

 an instance to the contrary. Living in the countr)', I myself am in the habit 

 of keeping some of these " residuary legatees of all other animals," as a friend 

 of mine calls them. Now, my pigs are not bisulcous, but wear four distinct 

 toes on their feet, although the middle ones, being most elongated, and armed 

 with large hoofs, certainly jiroduce an external resemblance to cloven footed 

 animals, which has occasioned their being classed, in the Levitical law, (which 

 purports not to be a philosophical arrangement), as dividing the hoof though 

 chewing not the cud. The impression of their feet in walking may, if care- 

 fully examined (as Cuvier says), be distinguished from the genuine bisulca. 

 I take it for granted, however, that Dr Fleming possesses bisulcous pigs. 

 APRIL JONI-: 1829. K 



