9^ ON THE GEOGRAPHY OF ANIMALS. 



(131.) On approaching the equinoctial regions of 

 this continent, a material change is seen in the dis- 

 tribution of its animals. The Great Desert seems to 

 form a natural separation between the northern and the 

 tropical Fauna ; although we must include in the latter 

 division, Senegal, and the whole range of thickly wooded 

 coasts which begins to appear towards Guinea and 

 Benin. The pestilential nature of the climate, to the 

 European traveller, opposes an insurmountable barrier 

 to the investigation of these countries, rich in every 

 production of nature, but deadly to the constitution of 

 civilised beings. Hence our knowledge is limited to 

 the few gleanings made near Sierra Leone, and to the 

 productions of Senegal. Of all those ardent but ill- 

 fated travellers who have sunk beneath the poisonous 

 atmosphere of this country, no one will be more 

 deeply regretted, particularly by the naturalist, than 

 the late Mr. Bowdich, for no one was more qua- 

 lified to reap the harvest of unknown forms which lie 

 hid in the forests of Western Africa. In these im- 

 penetrable recesses lives the chimpanzee (Troglodytes 

 niger Geof.), that satyr-like ape, which, of all animals in 

 creation, makes the nearest approach to the human form, 

 and which here represents the oran-outang of the Indian 

 Islands. This, in short, is the region of the African 

 Quadrumana, or four-handed animals. The maned 

 apes, Colobus, and the different baboons and monkeys 

 forming the genera Papio, Cyanocephalus, Cercocebus, 

 &c., are almost exclusively characteristic of equinoctial 

 Africa, and correspond to other tribes restricted to 

 India and America. In the more inland parts we 

 have the scale-covered manis, representing the ar- 

 madillo of Brazil : while herds of small antelopes, 

 different from those of Northern Africa, inhabit the 

 more inland open country on the banks of the river 

 Senegal. In general, all animals of rapine have a more 

 extensive geographic range than others : hence we find 

 the lions, the hyaenas, and other ferocious genera of this 

 continent, wandering nearly from one extremity to the 



