252 ZOOLOGICAL GEOGRAPHY. [part hi. 



different kind of country ; being almost wholly dense forests 

 where not cleared by man, and having the hot moist uniform 

 climate, and perennial luxuriance of vegetation, which charac- 

 terise the great equatorial belt of forest all round the globe. This 

 forest country extends to an unknown distance inland, but it was 

 found, with its features well marked, by Dr. Schweinfurth directly 

 he crossed the south-western watershed of the Nile ; and far to 

 the south we find it again unmistakably indicated, in the exces- 

 sively moist forest country about the head waters of the Congo, 

 where the heroic Livingstone met his death. In this forest 

 district many of the more remarkable African types are alone 

 found, and its productions occasionally present us with curious 

 similarities to those of the far removed South American or 

 Malayan forests. This is our second or West African sub- 

 region. 



Extra-tropical South Africa possesses features of its own, quite 

 distinct from those of both the preceding regions (although it has 

 also much in common with the first). Its vegetation is known 

 to be one of the richest, most peculiar, and most remarkable on 

 the globe ; and in its zoology it has a speciality, similar in kind 

 but less in degree, which renders it both natural and convenient 

 to separate it as our third, or South African sub-region. Its 

 limits are not very clearly ascertained, but it is probably bounded 

 by the Kalahari desert on the north-west, and by the Limpopo 

 Valley, or the mountain range beyond, on the north-east, although 

 some of its peculiar forms extend to Mozambique. There 

 remains the great Island of Madagascar, one of the most isolated 

 and most interesting on the globe, as regards its animal produc- 

 tions ; and to this must be added, the smaller islands of Bourbon, 

 Mauritius and Rodriguez, the Seychelles and the Comoro Islands, 

 forming together the Mascarene Islands, — the whole constituting 

 our fourth sub-region. 



Zoological Characteristics of the Ethiopian Region. — We have 

 now to consider briefly, what are the peculiarities and charac- 

 teristics of the Ethiopian Region as a whole, — those which give 

 it its distinctive features and broadly separate it from the other 

 primary zoological regions. 



