697 



ASIA. 



ASIA. 



93 



Ceylon may be referred to the Indian region, notwithstanding its 

 insular position. It produces cinnamon forests, nutmegs, and coffee ; 

 satin-wood and ebony trees are found in abundance in the jungle about 

 Trincomalee ; while the forests of the island abound generally in other 

 kinds of timber valuable for naval and other purposes. A kind called 

 Wallaporte is spoken of by Mr. Brooke as girthing from twenty-eight 

 to thirty-two feet. 



VII. The seventh and last region of the Asiatic Flora is that which 

 we would call the Equinoctial or Malayan. Spread over islands lying 

 under the line their centres usually occupied by mountains, and 

 their coasts washed by the waters of a vast ocean the features of 

 this Flora are essentially different from those of the continent of India. 

 The Atmosphere is in a state of perpetual humidity, acted upon by a 

 vertical sun ; the land is little cleared, and allows but slender oppor- 

 tunity for the sun and wind to dry it. Many of the islands are little 

 hettrr than a mass of jungle, or at all events these dense and pestilen- 

 tial woods occupy a considerable portion of the surface. Many of the 

 island are intrenched with rank after rank of the living palisadoes of 

 the mangrove, rooting into the mud, and surrounding the taller stems 

 of the Vipa-palm, Barringtonias, and thickets of sword-leaved vaquois- 

 tree. These woods are so dense that the sun never penetrates them ; 

 so entangled with climbers, coarse grasses, bamboos, and cane-palms, 

 that no human being can penetrate them without a company of 

 pioneers, and so damp that the parasites actually struggle with the 

 leaves of the trees on which they grow for mastery over the branches ; 

 spice-trees, nutmegs, and cinnamon, camphor-trees (Dipterocarpua), 

 and tree-ferns, here find their home ; and in the depths of their recesses 

 are sometimes nourished the fungus-like form of the huge flower of 

 Bafflesia. On the mountains are many species of oak, dammar-pines, 

 rhododendrons, and magnolias ; and at the summits are found crows- 

 foot, valerians, bilberries, berberries, brambles, honeysuckles, gentians, 

 and other well-known European forms. 



The cleared ground of these countries is occupied with a great 

 variety of fruit-trees common to the rest of India, along with the 

 mangosteen, durian, and rambutan, many-headed pines, jacks, and 

 shaddocks, which attain their highest perfection here only. Even in 

 the smaller islands the vegetation is of a similar kind. All the Mal- 

 dives of any extent are richly clothed with wood, chiefly palms ; among 

 which the cocoa-nut is of such importance that it is doubtful whether 

 some of the Malayan islands would be habitable without it, from 

 their want of water ; the inhabitants give its milk to their cattle, and 

 never use any other beverage themselves. 



(Journal of Ike Royal Geographical Society of London ; Journal of 

 the Asiatic Society of Bengal ; Royle's Illustrations of the Botany of 

 tht Himalaya Mountains; Malte-Brun's Geography; Qmelin's J'/ont 

 n ; Wallich's Plantie Asiatics Rariores ; Reinwardt, Ueber den 

 Chand-i',- <l,r Vegetation auf den Inteln dea Jndischen ArchipeU ; 

 Thomson, Winterbottom, and Strachey, Reporti of Britisk Associa- 

 tion, itc.) 



Zooloyi/ of Alia. Considered in relation to its extent, the con- 

 tinent of Asia and its islands contain a greater number and variety 

 of animals than any other quarter of the globe. This indeed might 

 reasonably be expected from the diversity of soil and climate, the 

 alternations of heat and cold, of drought and moisture, of mountain 

 and lowland, of luxuriant forest and bare plains. Nor is it only in 

 the number and variety of its zoological productions that Asia claims 

 our particular attention. Their intrinsic value in the economy of 

 human society, the prominent part which they played in the early 

 civilisation of mankind, and the universal importance which still 

 attaches to the cultivation of domestic animals among the most 

 civilised and refined, as well as among purely pastoral nations, make 

 the consideration of Asiatic zoology an object of interest not less to 

 the historian, the antiquary, and the general inquirer, than to the 

 zoologist. In fact the great majority of the domestic animals which 

 enabled man to till the earth, to extend his power, and to transport 

 his commodities to distant regions, which first gave to civilised man 

 that mastery over the productions of nature that perhaps more than 

 all his other attributes distinguishes him from the savage, and which 

 still continue to furnish him with food and raiment, is of Asiatic 

 orij/iii ; the camel, the horse, the ass, the ox, the dog, are all of eastern 

 derivation, and it is there alone that we must look for the original 

 type* of these useful animals. Naturalists have wasted much time in 

 <!ii'li ;iv<miing to discover the wild sources from which some of our 

 most ciiitiK.n and useful domestic animals were derived. Had they 

 looked for the origin of the dog, the cat, the sheep, and the goat in 

 regions which witnessed the first dawn of human civilisation, 

 -n which these valuable servants were first brought under the 

 dominion of man, their researches would probably have been attended 

 with greater success ; for it is but natural to suppose that the wild 

 species, if they still exist in a state of nature, are to be found in the 

 districts where they were first reclaimed. 



The numbers and relative distribution of Asiatic mammals are 

 expressed in the annexed table, as given in the ' Physical Atlas ' of 

 Hewn. Petermann and Milner. 



From this table it appears that of 1967 known species of mammalia 

 632, or very nearly one-third of the whole number, inhabit some part of 

 Asia or its dependent islands ; and of these it will be further remarked 

 that 492, or above three-fourths of the whole, are peculiar to that 



continent, the remaining 140 extending into the neighbouring conti- 

 nents of Europe and America. Indeed it may be generally observed 

 that the zoological productions of the northern parts of these three 

 continents respectively, if not absolutely identical, are at least 

 extremely similar, even in their most minute features. Northern 

 Asia, in particular, from its relative position as situated between 

 and connecting the other two, partakes equally of the productions of 

 both. 



The elephant, though never bred in a tame state, ought to be con- 

 sidered at the head of the domestic animals of Asia. The inhabitants 

 of India appear to have known and practised when Alexander's army 

 entered the country the very same modes of capturing and training 

 the elephant which are employed at the present day. Their ancient 

 writings mention this animal as a domestic servant, and he is con- 

 stantly represented in the same character upon their public monu- 

 ments. Alexander the Great, during his expedition into the north-west 

 parts of India, found the armies of the native princes attended by their 

 war elephants, just as the European invaders of the same country have 

 done in later times ; and from that period the elephant appears to 

 have been constantly employed by the successors of Alexander in 

 Western Asia, and also by the Carthaginians, and Pyrrhus, the king 

 of Epirus, who fought against the Romans in Italy. Immense troops 

 of wild elephants are still found in the northern parts of India, in the 

 Malayan peninsula, in Ceylon, and probably in all the large islands of 

 the Indian Archipelago. Those which are employed in the East India 

 Company's service, and which rarely exceed 7i feet average height, 

 are obtained in the upper provinces, principally from the vicinity of 

 the great saul forest which skirts the lower ridges of the Himalayan 

 chain for some hundred miles, and in which these animals are parti- 

 cularly abundant. 



The common domestic animals of Asia present more varieties of 

 species, and attain to greater individual perfection of form, than those 

 of any other quarter of the globe. The horse, the ass, the camel, und 

 probably most other species, are originally natives of the central plains 

 of this extensive continent, and though no longer found in a state of 

 nature are still proverbial for their symmetry and spirit. In Arabia, 

 particularly, the horse is of all other animals the object of most 

 especial care and value. The nomadic and pastoral nations which 

 have from time immemorial occupied the central plains of Asia are 

 universally an eqiiestrian people they may be almost said to live on 

 horseback ; and indeed it would be impossible for them to carry on 

 the predatory expeditions for which they have been in all ages 

 remarkable, or to traverse the steppes of Asia, without the aid of this 

 noble animal. Nor do these people employ the horse as a beast of 

 burden alone ; his flesh supplies them with their favourite food, and 

 the milk of the mare is the greatest dainty of a Tartar feast. Wild 

 horses are said to exist in the interior of Tartary, where the inhabit- 

 ants hunt them for the sake of their flesh ; but the account in this 

 instance, as in the similar report of the existence of wild asses in the 

 same localities, cannot be implicitly relied upon, as travellers imper- 

 fectly acquainted with zoological distiuctions frequently give the 

 names of familiar animals to others which resemble them in form 

 and appearance without attending very closely to their specific 

 difference. In the present instance it is more than probable that 

 both the wild horse and wild ass of eastern travellers are to be 

 referred to the "Dziggetai, a species of intermediate size and form 

 which inhabits the same regions, and has always retained its original 

 freedom. 



The asses like the horses of Asia are of larger proportions and more 

 generous spirit than those which have been transported to other 

 countries. That Central Asia was originally the habitat of hoth these 

 animals there can be no doubt, not only because we find them there 

 domesticated at the earliest periods of which we have any record, but 

 likewise because the Asiatics are and as far as we know always have 

 been equestrian nations, whilst in the neighbouring continent of 

 Africa the species was probably introduced from Asia, though at what 

 period is uncertain. The horse indeed was early known and used in 

 Egypt, as we know from the monuments and from written history. 

 But the negroes of interior Africa, and generally speaking the whole 



