II AMERICAN MUSEUMS 31 



unknown in Africa, the orangs and the long-armed apes 

 replace the gorilla and the chimpanzee, true wild cattle 

 are found as well as buffaloes, while the musk-deer, the 

 strange flying lemur, and the gigantic fox-bats are charac- 

 teristic forms unknown elsewhere. Among birds, the most 

 typical group is that of the pheasants, which reach their 

 highest development in the peacock and many-eyed 

 argus ; the hornbills are of a different type and more varied 

 forms than those of Africa ; the cuckoo family is abundant 

 and varied, while the gorgeously-coloured broadbills and 

 ground-thrushes belong to the low type of perchers so 

 abundant in South America. Among the insect tribes 

 we especially notice the glorious yellow and green-winged 

 ornithopterse, the princes of the butterfly world ; the huge 

 atlas moth, the largest of lepidoptera and probably the 

 largest-winged of all insects ; the three-horned rhinoceros 

 beetle ; the grand buprestidse, and the strange leaf-insects 

 of Java and Ceylon. 



We now enter the room devoted to the Europe-Siberian 

 fauna, the chief object in it being a fine skeleton of the 

 great Irish elk, while its most representative living mam- 

 mals are deer, wolves, wild boars, bears, wild oxen, wild 

 sheep and goats, the chamois, and some peculiar forms of 

 antelopes. Its most prominent birds are its partridges, 

 grouse, bustards and pheasants, but it is deficient in gay - 

 coloured perching-birds as compared with all other 

 regions. Its reptiles are few and insignificant, as are its 

 fresh-water fishes. In insects its chief characteristic is 

 the abundance of beetles of the genus Carabus, its dung- 

 feeding lamelliscoms and its fritillary butterflies. 



Lastly, the Australian room brings us into an altogether 

 distinct world of life. All the conspicuous mammals are 

 of the marsupial type, from the giant kangaroos down to 

 the diminutive kangaroo-rats and flying-opossums ; and 

 these comprise representatives of all the chief types of the 

 higher mammalia in the form of herbivorous, carnivorous, 

 rodent, and insectivorous marsupials. Among the birds 

 we have such peculiar forms as the emu, the mound- 

 making brush- turkeys, the lyre-birds and bower-birds, the 

 birds of paradise, the cockatoos and lories, the brush- 

 tongued honey-suckers, and the varied and beautiful forms 



