156 STUDIES IN LIFE AND SENSE. 



the moles, shrews, and hedgehogs not an example exists in this 

 area, if we except a little shrew in the north, and one genus in the 

 West Indian Islands. Then, also, we may note the absence of 

 sheep and oxen ; there are none of the civets, so widely spread over 

 other areas ; and there is an absence of the large carnivora, and of 

 the elephants and rhinoceroses of the Old World. 



Equally notable are the birds of the region. The smaller 

 Passerine birds of the region, curiously enough, want the singing 

 muscles of the larynx, as a rule. To this group belong the 

 ant-thrushes, tree creepers, tyrants, chatterers, and manakins. 

 Other typical birds of this area are the tanagers, toucans, puff- 

 birds, todies, and mot- 

 mots. No less typical 

 are the macaws, the 

 curious curassows and 

 tinamous, the sun bit- 

 terns and the horned 

 screamers ; and the 

 humming-birds are 

 likewise among the 

 veritable gems of 

 South American orni- 

 FIG. 22. PANGOLIN. thology. The hum- 



ming- birds, ranging 



from Sitka to Patagonia, from the plains to the towering heights 

 of the Andes, are absolutely confined to the New World. "No 

 naturalist," says Mr. Wallace, " can study in detail this single family 

 of birds, without being profoundly impressed with the vast antiquity 

 of the South American continent, its long isolation from the rest of 

 the land surface of the globe, and the persistence through countless 

 ages of all the conditions requisite for the development and increase 

 of varied forms of animal life." The curassows are distant relatives 

 of the mound-birds of Australia, and the tinamous possess affinities 

 with the ostrich-tiibe itself; whilst in such peculiar Neotropical birds 

 as the Cariama of Brazil, the sun bitterns and horned screamers, 

 we see types of birds, either intermediate between other families, or 

 standing solitary and isolated in the bird class, testifying again by 

 these peculiarities of structure to the lapse of time which has passed 

 since their evolution from some common and now extinct type. 



The snakes of the region are numerous and peculiar, and the 

 lizards are equally varied. The true crocodiles and the New World 

 alligators coexist in this region, and the tortoises attain consider- 

 able development in this region. The tailed newts are well-nigh 

 absent, however ; frogs and toads are abundant ; and the fishes of 

 South America present us with numerous types, many of the species 



