590 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



The monkey races here are similarly furnished, and essentially differ from the apes of 

 Africa and Asia, which have no such peculiarity. It has been remarked, that America is 

 deficient in the large and powerful animals which are found on the ancient continent ; but 

 in their place, some singular tribes appear, in the formation of which the ordinary rules 

 of nature seem to have been abandoned. Such are the tribes which Linnaeus referred to 

 his order of Bruta, and which Cuvier has called Edentes, quadrupeds which are partially 

 or wholly deficient in the organs of mastication, as the sloths, the ant-eaters, and the 

 armudilloes, the former of which especially are the defective monsters of Buffon, rude and 

 imperfect attempts of nature. With his usual felicity, Cuvier remarks of the sloths, " that 

 we find in them so little relation to ordinary animals ; the general laws of organisation 

 prevailing among the species at present existing, apply so little to them ; the different parts 

 of their bodies appear to be so much in contradiction to the laws of co-existence which 

 we find established through almost the whole animal kingdom, that we might really 

 suspect them to be the remains of another order of things the living relics of that pre 

 existing nature, the ruins of which are elsewhere discovered only in the interior of the 

 earth ; and we might conjecture that these creatures have escaped by some miracle the 

 catastrophes which have destroyed the other species that were their contemporaries." 

 The organic remains of nearly-allied animals to the sloth are common in South America 

 the megatherium, megalonyx, scelidotherium, and mylodon, in dimensions and power the 

 rhinoceroses and elephants of a former world. 



4. Region of Intertropical and South Africa. In the northern part of this district, 

 where those desert plains commence which traverse the whole of the Old Continent, we 

 find the one-humped camel, of which the dromedary is a fleet species, without which the 

 Sahara could not be crossed by the caravans. In all the great rivers of this quarter of 

 the globe, except the lower part of the Nile, the hippopotamus occurs, but more abundantly 

 in the southern districts. The giraffe is peculiar to a tract of country extending from 

 Cape Guardafui to the Cape of Good Hope, probably including the mountainous plains of 

 Central Africa. This is the location likewise of the beautiful zebra and quajrga, 

 analogous animals to the horse and ass of the northern hemisphere, as well as of a variety 

 of remarkable antelopes. No genuine tigers are found in this region ; but the leopard and 

 the panther supply their place two species of the feline tribe that are outwardly dis 

 tinguished only by their spots, those of the leopard being more regular and beautifully 

 defined, a tenant chiefly of Guinea and Senegambia. One species of rhinoceros, that 

 with two horns, is peculiar to South Africa, where it is very commonly met with, along 

 with a race of elephants, distinct from the Asiatic, which are every where found in great 

 numbers, from the Cape of Good Hope to the 20th parallel. While the king of quadru 

 peds has an extensive range in Asia, it is in Africa that the lion is most perfectly 

 developed, exhibiting that majestic mien, that strength and courage, which have won for 

 him his title. His home here extends from the southern roots of Mount Atlas to the 

 Cape. 



5. Region of Continental India and the Indian Archipelago. This is specially the 

 country of the tiger, which, though found in Eastern Persia and in China, attains his 

 maximum size, and displays the greatest ferocity, in the jungles of Hindustan, Ceylon, 

 and Sumatra. A variety of the elephant occupies the continent as far as the 30th parallel, 

 and occurs in some of the islands, which is the range also of the one-horned rhinoceros. 

 But several of the islands of the archipelago contain species and genera which are not 

 found on the continent ; and hence they are sometimes considered as forming a separate 

 zoological province. Thus the hippopotamus, which does not exist in any of the Asian 

 rivers, is said to inhabit the Sunda isles ; and in other islands we have the crocodile 

 proper, a distinct animal from the gavial of the Ganges. The tapir also, which was once 



