GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMALS. 547 



and North America offer a great analogy in their general 

 aspect ; and in the tropical countries of the two worlds we 

 see predominating similar forms. It is not that we find 

 identical species in regions distinct and nearly isothermal, 

 but species more or less neighbouring, and which seem to be 

 the representatives of one and the same type. Thus, the apes 

 of India and of Central Africa are represented in tropical 

 America by other apes, easily distinguished from the first ; to 

 the lion, the tiger, and the panther of the Old Continent, 

 correspond in the New World the puma, the jaguar, and 

 the ocelot. The mountains of Europe, of Asia, and of 

 Northern America nourish bears of different species, but still 

 presenting but slight differences. Seals abound especially in 

 the neighbourhood of the two polar circles ; and if we wish 

 to look for proofs of this tendency, not in the more elevated 

 classes of the animal kingdom, but amongst the inferior 

 beings, we shall find them no less evident ; the craw-fishes 

 and lobsters, &c., for example, appear to be confined to 

 the temperate regions of the globe, and are found spread 

 abroad throughout the greatest part of Europe, by the species 

 so common in our rivulets, in the south of Russia by a dif- 

 ferent species, in Northern America by two other species 

 equally distinct from the preceding, in Chile by a fourth 

 species, to the south of New Holland by a fifth, in Mada- 

 gascar by a sixth, and at the Cape of Good Hope by a 

 seventh. 



The comparison of the faunae peculiar to the different zoo- 

 logical regions of the globe conducts to other results, of which 

 it is more difficult to give an explanation. Thus, when we 

 examine successively the whole of the species inhabiting 

 Asia, Africa, and America, there may be observed in the 

 fauna of the New World a character of inferiority which did 

 not escape the celebrated Buffon. In fact, there do not exist 

 in the New World mammals so large as in the old continents ; 

 we find indeed in Northern America a considerable number 

 of apes, but amongst these animals there are none equal to 

 the ourang and chimpanzee ; and it is rather the rodents and 

 the edentata which abound the most, that is to say, of all 

 ordinary mammals the least intelligent. Finally, it is in 

 America that we meet with the sarigues (opossums), animals 

 which belong to an inferior type of ordinary mammals, and 

 which have no representatives in Europe, Asia, or Africa. If 

 we pass afterwards from the New World to Australia, a still 



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