xvi Life and Living Creatures 323 



smaller than many insects. The rhea of the southern 

 plains belongs to the ostrich family, but, as a whole, the 

 bird-fauna of South America is more allied to the Oriental 

 than to the Ethiopian. 



414. Oriental Realm. Animals common in the Palae- 

 arctic and the Ethiopian regions meet together in the 

 Oriental realm, and give it a characteristically mixed 

 fauna. Lions, leopards, rhinoceroses, and elephants, almost 

 or quite identical with those of Africa, are found along with 

 bears, wild dogs, foxes, and the true deer so distinctive of 

 Northern Eurasia. Lemurs akin to those of Madagascar 

 are abundant in the south, and the mixture is completed by 

 tapirs and many birds with strong South American affinities. 

 The tiger is peculiar to the Oriental realm, but ranges from 

 Java northward within the borders of the Palaearctic as far 

 as Sakhalin, and is curiously enough absent from Ceylon 

 and Borneo. This realm abounds in squirrels, mice, and 

 bats, and, together with some Ethiopian forms of apes, it 

 affords a home in Borneo to the man -like oran-outan. 

 Although to north and west the Oriental merges gradually 

 into other realms it has a sharp boundary to the south- 

 east, where Wallace in his exploration of the Malay Archi- 

 pelago found the Oriental species, even of birds and insects, 

 stop at a line drawn between the small islands of Bali 

 and Lombok, and thence between Borneo and Celebes 

 south of the Philippines. Celebes, however, seems to be 

 occupied by a transition fauna. 



415. Australian Realm. So peculiar and distinctive 

 is the fauna of Australia and the surrounding islands that 

 many naturalists class it as a main division opposed to all 

 the rest of the globe. Except the dingo or native dog, 

 which may have been introduced by man, the flying foxes 

 (of the bat family), and some birds, none of the animals of 

 other realms occur in it. Their place is taken by the least 

 developed of mammals, the monotremes, of which the duck- 

 bill is the type, and the marsupials, represented by the kan- 

 garoo. Opossums, living in trees, are the only Australian 

 form of animals, and indeed the only marsupial, found in 

 other continents, a few species occurring in America. The 



