8 ANIMALS OF NORTH AMERICA. 



species, generating fresh ones in their turn, and terminating 

 with the human family as the masterpiece of this successive 

 formation. 



The most natural supposition is, that the all-wise Creator 

 placed each species where it was permanently destined to 

 live; and that from these different "centres of creation," 

 combinations have so multiplied between contiguous regions, 

 as to form the various races of animal life. When we find a 

 country possessing a group or groups of animals not found 

 elsewhere; we may at once set down that as being the centre 

 of a peculiar creation. In the location of many species, 

 nature has placed various limits, and the spaces occupied by 

 them are most unequal. For example: the Kangaroo and 

 Ornithorhyncus are confined to New Holland ; the Grizzly 

 Bear to the Rocky Mountains ; the Dodo, now extinct, to 

 the Mauritius ; whilst the Swallow, the Crow, and the Fox, 

 extend to every known region. The principal cause of 

 " limitation " is doubtless connected with the unequal tem- 

 perature x of localities ; certain species which thrive in one 

 climate, perishing under the influence of another ; also the 

 nature of vegetation in one country, and the absence of it in 

 another, as in the Polar regions, confining to the former 

 the larger beasts of prey, dependent on herbivorous animals 

 as their food, with the exception of,^in the latter, those that 

 subsist on fish. The number of species increase as we near 

 the tropics, and there it is where Nature has been most 

 lavish in the diversity of life, beauty of color, strangeness 

 of form, and greatness of proportion. The present total 

 number of living species which has been satisfactorily made 

 out and ascertained, exceeds, according to Agassiz, 50,000 ! 

 If the time ever comes when the facts of Natural History 

 are given without the admixture of fable, then this branch of 

 science will be more readily advanced in improvement than 

 can' be readily hoped for, so long as imagination is allowed to 

 take the place of actual observation. Modern writers continue 





