OA ON THE GEOGRAPHY OF ANIMALS. 
, (131.) On approaching the+equinoctial regions ef 
this continent, a material change is seen in the dis- 
tribution of its animals. The Great Desert seems to 
form a natural separation between the northern and the 
tropical Fauna ; although we must include in the latter 
division, Senegal, and the whole range of thickly wooded 
coasts which begins to appear towards Guinea and 
Benin. The pestilential nature of the climate, to the 
European traveller, opposes an insurmountable barrier 
to the investigation of these countries, rich in every 
production of nature, but deadly to the constitution of 
civilised beings. Hence our knowledge is limited to 
the few gleanings made near Sierra Leone, and to the 
productions of Senegal. Of all those ardent but ill- 
fated travellers who have sunk beneath the poisonous 
atmosphere of this country, no one will be more 
deeply regretted, particularly by the naturalist, than 
the late Mr. Bowdich, for no one was more qua- 
lified to reap the harvest of unknown forms which lie 
hid in the forests of Western Africa. In these im- 
penetrable recesses lives the chimpanzee ( T'roglodytes 
niger Geof.), that satyr-like ape, which, of all animals in 
creation, makes the nearest approach to the human form, 
and which here represents the oran-outang of the Indian 
Islands. This, in short, is the region of the African 
Quadrumana, or four-handed animals. The maned 
apes, Colobus, and the different baboons and monkeys 
forming the genera Papio, Cyanocephalus, Cercocebus, 
&c., are almost exclusively characteristic of equinoctial 
Africa, and correspond to other tribes restricted to 
India and America. In the more inland parts we 
have the scale-covered manis, representing the ar- 
madillo of Brazil: while herds of small antelopes, 
different from those of Northern Africa, inhabit the 
more inland open country on the banks of the river 
Senegal. In general, all animals of rapine have a more 
extensive geographic range than others: hence we find 
the lions, the hyenas, and other ferocious genera of this 
continent, wandering nearly from one extremity to the 
