A LAND OF SKELETONS 



NEXT to Australia, which, as regards its fauna, stands quite 

 apart from the whole of the rest of the world, South America 

 possesses a greater number of peculiar types of animals than 

 any other region at the present day. A traveller, for 

 instance, starting from Europe may wander eastwards across 

 the northern part of Asia as far as Japan without ceasing to 

 meet with types of mammals and birds perfectly familiar 

 to him, while the same is, to a great extent, the case if 

 his footsteps are directed to India or Africa. It is true, 

 indeed, that in both the latter countries he will come across 

 creatures like elephants and rhinoceroses, which are now 

 unknown in Europe, while in Africa he will be confronted 

 by hippopotamuses, giraffes, okapis, and ostriches. All 

 these animals, however, once existed in Europe during the 

 later portions of geological history, and may accordingly be 

 counted as pertaining to the European fauna. Still more 

 striking is this similarity of the fauna with that of Europe 

 if the traveller's route happen to lie across the northern 

 half of the New World, where he may meet with many 

 mammals, such as the bison, Rocky Mountain sheep, grizzly 

 bear, wapiti, elk, reindeer, wolf, and fox, more or less closely 

 allied to Old World forms. On the other hand, when South 

 America is reached, it will be found that not only are all 

 the mammals and birds specifically different from those of 

 Europe, but likewise that many of them belong to genera 



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