780 



TAPIR. 



the silvery-white on the lower mandible, and the 

 colours are brown and dull purple. The birds are 

 found in the tropical parts of South America. 



Scarlet Tanager of Mexico (T. rubra). There are 

 some doubts whether this may not be the same bird 

 as the scarlet tanager of the United States, though 

 the bill is not of the same colour. At all events they 

 resemble each other so much in other respects, that 

 a popular description of this one would be little else 

 than repeating that of the other. 



We shall not farther extend the list of these very 

 abundant and beautiful birds; and we have given 

 an outline of the colouring of so many of them, merely 

 to show what endless variety Nature can produce in 

 this way, with almost equal beauty throughout the 

 whole series. Whatever happens to be the particular 

 tints and markings of any of these birds, there is a 

 delicacy in the colour which, those who have not 

 seen tropical birds in the living state cannot readily 

 understand. Their manners, too, are gentle in all the 

 species, though at the same time lively. They are 

 indeed, generally speaking, birds of great activity ; 

 and though their broods are not numerous, they are 

 attentive parents, and have their paternal duties to 

 perform twice in the year. They give a great deal 

 of liveliness to the borders of the forests, in those 

 situations where the true climbers, and other cha- 

 racteristic birds of the deptli of the forest shade, 

 rarely come. The characters of those forests can 

 hardly be described ; for there is every kind of coun- 

 try within a short distance, and, being in most places 

 completely in a state of nature, each place has its 

 characteristic inhabitant exactly the one which is 

 fitted to its physical state, and its seasonal condition 

 at the time that it is seen. Upon the margin of the 

 arid waste, or that place which is apart in the rains, 

 and barren as a trodden path in the drought, we 

 have one of these birds on the very first bush that 

 we come to ; and, as is the case in our own country, 

 that one usually has a little song to welcome one to 

 the study of the mighty museum of living Nature, 

 which lies hidden in the wide and deep shade of the 

 all but interminable forest. Years, centuries, must 

 however roll over our heads, or equal periods of 

 oblivion over the generation which now inhabits the 

 earth, before the volume of this mighty book of 

 Nature shall be opened even to the most zealous 

 and able inquirer. While this is the case, there need 

 no man be under the slightest apprehension that the 

 pleasure of discovering either the facts or the laws of 

 Nature shall ever have an end. 



TAPIR (Taj)inis). A genus of pachydermatous 

 mammalia, of which there are two living species 

 found at places of the globe which are nearly the 

 antipodes of each other South America and the 

 Oriental Isles. This is not the only point in which 

 these two regions agree in their natural history, and 

 differ from all other places. South America is, 

 indeed, an extensive country, with a very varied 

 surface, and therefore we cannot speak of the whole 

 of it as being comparable with the isles of the East, 

 which being small, as compared with it, in their indi- 

 vidual, and even their collective extent, have their 

 tiatural character much more uniform. But the 

 shores of South America, upon which the trade-wind 

 beats, and the valleys of the rivers as far inland as 

 the influence of the trade-wind extends (which, under 

 the equator, where the continent is broadest, is 

 nearly three-fourths of it, including Brazil and the 

 greater part of the valley of the Amazon), has very 



much the character of the eastern islands, and also 

 of the Malay peninsula in short, of the whole of 

 that portion of Asia which is umTer the influence of 

 the trade- wind of the Pacific. The east side of 

 Africa is not of the same character, because the 

 ocean to the east of it is cut off from the Pacific by 

 Australia, and converted into a monsoon sea by the 

 alternating action upon each other of the sea in the 

 south and the land in the north. This is the true 

 reason of the anomaly which we always meet with 

 from Africa when we compare the natural history, 

 and more especially the zoology, of the tropical parts 

 of the earth ; and it is necessary that we should bear 

 them in mind, if we are to study the general relation 

 of that natural history in a profitable manner. 



Those regions which enjoy the continual action of 

 the trade-winds appear to have a power of preserva- 

 tion and endurance in them which we do not meet 

 with in places which are less under the controul of 

 any air current from the sea. Their forests do not 

 appear to wax old like the forests of other places, but 

 to be the same day after day and century after cen- 

 tury ; and thus we may be prepared to meet with, in 

 them, both plants and animals which have perished 

 from the other parts of the earth, or, if not animals of 

 the same genus or species with the lost ones of other 

 regions, yet animals of the same order. 



In the article MAMMALIA, to which we beg to 

 refer the reader, there will be found some remarks on 

 the pachydermata, and, among others, that this order 

 of animals is little else than a collection of fragments, 

 having much less similarity to each other than the 

 animals of almost any other order. If we except 

 the phoca genus, which have but little in common 

 with the other pachydermata, we find that all the 

 rest belong to a remote state of the globe a state 

 in which it is, or must have been, covered by an 

 exuberance of coarse vegetation. It is true that 

 some are fitted for eating the roots and seeds or 

 fruits of that vegetation, as, for instance, the hog ; 

 while others can almost subsist by gnawing the suc- 

 culent twigs which grow by the banks of the rivers, 

 as is the case with the hippopotamus ; but in the 

 portion of the system which lies between them we 

 find that the succession is constantly broken, and 

 that we are in want of one or more races to make 

 out the connexion, so that we might understand how 

 the animals could work together with anything like 

 the same harmony which strikes us at once in other 

 parts of the system. 



It is the vegetable feeders which are of the most 

 value to us in that part of natural history, by which 

 we seek to trace the relation of the kingdoms of 

 nature to each other, and the whole to the physical 

 condition of the globe. If we take the ruminantia, 

 for instance, we can easily trace them, in a very 

 regular and obvious series, from the buffalo on the 

 swampy plain, by the sea, or the broad river, to 

 some light and bounding animal on the mountain-top. 

 So tracing them, we can see their perfect adaptation 

 to the state of things as now existing. But, when 

 we have recourse to the pachydermata, we can make 

 no such general allocation to all the principal varie- 

 ties of surface as we now find them. We have 

 stated that the phoca family are an anomaly among 

 the pachydermata, and could not very easily be 

 brought into any series with the rest, even if we were 

 to suppose that as many fossil races should be dis- 

 covered as would fill up the other blanks. The 

 camel family stand in the same anomalous position 



