588 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



enjoy, as in their native climate, the renewed vegetation of spring." The first colonists 

 of La Plata landed with seventy-two horses, in the year 1535, when, owing to a temporary 

 desertion of the colony, the animal ran wild ; and in 1580, only forty-five years afterwards, 

 it had reached the Straits of Magellan. The ass has a more restricted range than the 

 horse, not being capable of enduring so great a degree of cold, though usually far from 

 being considered a delicate animal. To the warmer parts of the temperate zone, between 

 the 20th and the 40th parallels of latitude, the ass seems best adapted, not propagating 

 much beyond the 60th, and only occurring in a state of degeneration beyond the 52nd. 

 The sheep and goat tribe are widely spread, equally supporting the extremes of 

 temperature. According to Zimmerman, the Argali or Mouflon, the original race of sheep, 

 still exists on all the great mountains of the two continents ; and the Capricorn and Ibex, 

 the ancestors of the common goat, inhabit the high European elevations. From the 64th 

 degree of north latitude, the hog is met with all over the Old Continent, and also in the 

 islands of the Indian Ocean peopled by the Malay race ; and since its introduction into the 

 New World, it has diffused itself -over it, from the 50th parallel north as far as Patagonia. 

 Originally the cat was not known in America, nor in any part of Oceanica ; but it has 

 now spread into almost every country of the globe. Among animals entirely wild, the 

 most extensively diffused are, the fox, hare, squirrel, and ermine ; but the species are 

 different in every region of the world ; nor is there perhaps one example to be found of a 

 species perfectly identical naturally existing in distant localities of the earth. 



Confining our attention chiefly to the wild quadrupeds, and to those of the largest 

 class, the earth may be divided into several great zoological provinces, in each of which 

 we find distinct groups of animals. 



1. The Arctic Region. The northern parts of both continents have the same animals 

 in common ; for north-eastern Asia is only separated from north-western America by a 

 narrow strait, across which the communication, in the winter season, is not difficult, by 

 means of the ice and intervening islands. Throughout this district the white or polar 

 fox is diffused, sometimes called the isatis, an animal different from the common species, 

 occurring in great numbers in Nova Zembla, inhabiting Kamschatka and the Aleutian Isles 

 on the one side, and Iceland and Lapland on the other. Here also is the range of 

 the rein-deer, of all large land animals, the one that advances nearest to the pole. It is 

 found on all the coasts of the Frozen Ocean, and is so impatient of warmth, that in Scan- 

 dinavia it can scarcely exist south of 65, descending in Russia to 63, where the climate 

 is colder, and to 50 in Asia, roving into Chinese Tartary among the Tongouses, where 

 a still more rigorous temperature prevails. In America, the rein-deer, or karibou, which 

 is identically the same animal, descends as low as 45. It is indigenous in the island of 

 Spitzbergen, and is found also in Iceland, but not as a native, having been brought there 

 by man so late as the year 1770, when three were introduced from Norway, and turned 

 adrift, which have since multiplied into considerable herds, not unfrequently seen in the 

 mountainous districts. In the white or polar bear we have the monarch of quadrupeds 

 in the arctic region, a maritine species, the Ursus maritimus of naturalists, totally different 

 from the common bear of the land. This ferocious and formidable animal never quits the 

 "regions of thick-ribbed ice," nor travels far from the ocean ; but haunts the shores, some- 

 times putting out to sea upon the drifting ice, and making distant excursions by this 

 means, and by his own locomotive energies, being a strong and persevering swimmer. 

 Hence, he is well known in the islands, as well as the continental parts of the frozen zone, 

 twelve or thirteen in a season occasionally finding their way from West Greenland across 

 the strait to Iceland. It has been observed by Scoresby, that they have been seen on the 

 ice in such quantities as to be comparable to flocks of sheep on a common, and that they 

 are often found on field-ice, above two hundred miles from the shore. Captain Parry, 



