THE EUROPEAN PROVINCE. 19 
consequently selected from the department of ornithology 
those facts which appeared to authorise us in consider- 
ing Europe as one of the primary zoological divisions of 
the earth ; and shall now proceed to lay these facts, and 
the inferences, before the reader. It has, indeed, been 
objected to this class of animals, that no very certain 
results can attend the study of their distribution. Pos- 
sessing the powers of locomotion in a higher degree 
than any others, and by their migratory nature per- 
petually wandering into distant countries, they would 
seem, of all animals, the most widely dispersed, and con- 
sequently the least calculated to assist such an enquiry. 
How far this may be true, it will be our object to in- 
vestigate. Certain, however, it is, that if, under such 
disadvantages, any definite notions on animal distri- 
bution can be derived from such volatile beings, the 
results will go very far to strengthen our views upon 
two material points: first, that a division of the earth, 
characterised by strong peculiarities in its ornithology, 
must be, to a certain extent, a natural division ; and, 
secondly, that we shall be fully authorised in supposing, 
by analogy, that the same results would attend an equally 
close investigation of other animals ; since it cannot for 
a moment be supposed that man and birds are distri- 
buted according to one plan, and all other animals by 
another. 
(24.) Before illustrating the ornithology of Europe, 
with reference to the geopraphic range of the genera and 
species, we must advert to the difficulties by which the 
enquiry is surrounded. The accounts and relations of 
travellers, not in themselves naturalists, must, upon this 
and every other occasion, be received with great caution. 
Unacquainted with those nice distinctions, on which not 
only the separation of species, but of genera and 
families, are now known to depend, these writers per- 
petually contradict, by a hasty application of well- 
known names, some of the most acknowledged truths 
in animal geography. Nor can the facts collected in 
the compilations or more scientific writers be always 
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