chap, iv.] ZOOLOGICAL REGIONS. 63 



primary divisions of the earth. Neither can much stress be 

 laid on the negative characteristics of New Zealand, since they 

 are found to an almost equal extent in every oceanic island. 



Again, it is both inconvenient and misleading to pick out 

 certain tracts from the midst of one region or sub-region and to 

 place them in another, on account of certain isolated affinities 

 which may often be accounted for by local peculiarities. Even 

 if the resemblance of the fauna of Chili and Patagonia to that 

 of the Palsearctic and Nearctic regions was much greater than it 

 is, this mode of dealing with it would be objectionable ; but it 

 is still more so, when we find that these countries have a 

 strongly marked South American character, and that the north- 

 ern affinities are altogether exceptional. The Eodentia, which 

 comprise a large portion of the mammalia of these countries, 

 are wholly South American in type, and the birds are almost all 

 allied to forms characteristic of tropical America. 



For analogous reasons the Ethiopian must not be made to 

 include any part of India or Ceylon ; for although the Fauna of 

 Central India has some African affinities, these do not prepon- 

 derate ; and it will not be difficult to show that to follow Mr. 

 Andrew Murray in uniting bodily the Ethiopian and Indian 

 regions of Mr. Sclater, is both unnatural and inconvenient. The 

 resemblances between them are of the same character as those 

 which would unite them both with the Palasarctic and Nearctic 

 regions ; and although it may be admitted, that, as Professor 

 Huxley maintains, this group forms one of the great primary 

 divisions of the globe, it is far too extensive and too hetero- 

 geneous to subserve the practical uses for which we require a 

 division of the world into zoological regions. 



Reasons for adopting the six Regions first proposed by Mr. Sclater. 

 — So that we do not violate any clear affinities or produce any 

 glaring irregularities, it is a positive, and by no means an un- 

 important, advantage to have our named regions approximately 

 equal in size, and with easily defined, and therefore easily re- 

 membered, boundaries. All elaborate definitions of interpene- 

 trating frontiers, as well as regions extending over three-fourths 

 of the land surface of the globe, and including places which are 



