14 ON THE GEOGRAPHY OF ANIMALS. 
exceptions, are peculiar, but are represented by analo- 
gous genera ; and each continent is distinctly separated 
in its animal productions by indications as certain and 
as indubitable as those which distinguish their respec- 
tive inhabitants. Can we include temperate America 
in the same zoological province with the parallel regions 
of Europe, when there are not three land or rather 
perching birds common to both? and when more than 
two thirds of the genera found in America are totally 
unknown in Europe or in Asia? Look to the bears 
of the temperate regions of the three continents : 
those of America and Europe are similarly constructed, 
but the species are different; while those, again, of 
Asia, are formed upon a totally different model. We 
might fill pages with similar facts; all tending, as we 
conceive, to exemplify the necessity of preserving these 
relations as distinct in our views of animal geography, 
as we are compelled to do in threading the maze of 
natural arrangement. Dr. Prichard, however, has the 
great merit of having made the nearest approach to such 
a theory of animal distribution as is suggested by the 
natural geography of the earth; nor need we wonder 
that he has failed in the application, since others, who, 
from their peculiar studies, might be supposed more com- 
petent to the task, have erred from the very foundation. 
(19.) Since, then, there is as marked a distinction 
between the animals of the great continents as there is 
between the races of mankind by whom they are inha- 
bited, it remains to be considered whether the ge- 
neral distribution of both are not in unison? Whether 
their Divine Creator has not, by certain laws, incom- 
prehensible to human understanding, regulated the dis- 
tribution of man and of animals upon the same plan ? 
These questions lead us to the following propositions : — 
1. That the countries peopled by the five recorded 
varieties of the human species, are likewise inhabited 
by different races of animals, blending into each other 
at their confines. 
