CHAPTER II. 

 Harmonies. 



Modern science has shewn that animals and 

 plants are not scattered promiscuously over the 

 world, but placed in spheres according to well- 

 defined laws. A few kinds seem, indeed, cosmo- 

 politan, but the great majority have a limited 

 range, each inhabiting its own region, and each, 

 in very many cases, replaced in other similar 

 regions by species more or less closely allied and 

 yet distinct. And more than this ; that there art- 

 predominant forms of life in every region, so en- 

 tirely governing the physiognomy of the land- 

 scape, that an accomplished naturalist, on being 

 suddenly set down in any part of the earth's sur- 

 face, would instantly tell in what region he was, 

 by an examination of a few plants or animals. 



The statistics on which this science of the geo- 

 graphical distribution of life is built up do not 

 come within my present scope, which is to present 

 the poetic side of nature; but there is a collateral 

 aspect of the same truths worthy of considera- 

 tion, namely, the harmony which subsists between 

 all the parts of a natural-history picture. If we 

 look with interest on the lion, the jaguar, the 

 zebra, the python, at the Zoological Gardens, or 

 the palms, and bananas, and bamboos in the 

 conservatories at Kew; how vastly more inter- 

 esting would it be to behold each in its own 

 home; surrounded by all the accessories of surface- 

 form, of atmospheric phenomena, of vegetation, of 

 animal life, which properly belong to it, and with- 

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