52 ON THE GEOGRAPHY OF ANIMALS. 
are those belonging to the parrot and gallinaceous tribes. 
In the former, Equinoctial Africa is very poor; but the 
same latitudes, in Asia, furnish us with numerous and 
splendid examples, both of genera and species, altogether 
peculiar. The suctorial cockatoos (Microglossum Geoff.), 
the large white cockatoos of Malacca, the elegant ring- 
necked parrakeets of the continent, and the crimson- 
coloured lories of the islands, are appropriated solely 
to these regions. Lastly must be enumerated the splen- 
did peacocks of the continent, and the wild cocks of 
the islands, forming the genera Pavo, Polyplectron, 
Argus, Lophyrus, Lophophorus, and Gallus, not one of 
which has yet occurred beyond the limits of the Asiatic 
range. 
(71.) On the remaining vertebrated animals, compre- 
hending the fishes, reptiles, and serpents, peculiar to 
these regions, little can be said; since their geographic 
distribution has received little or no attention. The nu- 
merous species, however, that have been made known by 
the researches of Dr. Roxburgh, Dr. Buchanan Hamil- 
ton, and General Hardwicke, prove that in these classes 
nature is equally prolific, and that she has given to 
India a vast number of genera which do not occur in 
other countries. 
(72.) Of the invertebrated animals we must confine 
ourselves to the Testacea, as embracing the more popular 
study of conchology ; the Indian seas, more than any 
other part of the world, abound with the greatest va- 
riety of shell-fish, and exhibit a remarkable con- 
trast to the paucity of species found under the parallel 
latitudes of Africa and America. It is also a singular 
fact, not hitherto noticed, that nearly three fourths of 
these shells belong to animals entirely carnivorous ; who, 
to support life, must be perpetually carrying on, like 
the ferocious tigers of the continent, a destructive 
warfare against the weaker animals of their own class. 
The conchologist, who looks beyond the empty shell in 
his museum, need hardly be reminded that the immense 
number of species belonging to the genera Conus, Oliva, 
