'JQ BRITISH ASSOCIATION TOR 



flod that tho3e which were deprived of the power of flight, and -were adapted to 

 subsist on the vegetation of a warm or temperate latitude, would still be met with 

 more or less associated together, and least distant from the original centre of dis- 

 persion, situated in such a latitude. This, liowever, is not only not the case with 

 birds, but is not so with any other classes of animals. The Quaih'umana, or order 

 of apes, monkeys and lemur, consist of three chief divisions — Gateihines, Platyr- 

 hines, and Strepsirhines. The first family is peculiar to the "Old World"; the 

 second to South America ; the third has the majority of its species and its chief 

 genus (Lemur), exclusively in Madagascar. Out of twenty-six known species of 

 Lemuridce, only six are Asiatic, and three are African. "Whilst adverting to the 

 geographical distribution of Quadrumaua, I would contrast the peculiarly limited 

 range of the orangs and chimpanzees with the cosmopolitan powers of mankind. 

 The two species of orang (Pithecus) are confined to Borneo and Sumatra; the 

 two species of chimpanzee (Troglodytes) are limited to an intertropical tract of 

 the western part of Africa. They appear to be inexorably bound by climatal 

 influences regulating the assemblage of certain trees and the production of certain 

 fruits. Climate rigidly limits the range of the Quadrumana latitudinally ; crea- 

 tional and geographical causes limit their range in longitude. Distinct genera 

 represent each other in the same latitudes of the New and Old Worlds ; and also, 

 in a great degree, in Africa and Asia. But the development of an orang out of a 

 chimpanzee, or reciprocally, is physiologically inconceivable. The order of Rumi- 

 nantiais principally represented by Old World species, of which 162 have been 

 defined ; whilst only 24 species have been discovered in the New World, and none 

 in Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand, or the Polynesian Isles. The cameleo- 

 pard is now peculiar to Africa ; the musk deer to Africa and Asia; out of about 

 fifty defined species of antelope, only one is known in America, and none in the 

 central and southern divisions of the New World. Palaeontology has expanded 

 our knowledge of the range of the giraffe during Miocene or old Piiooeene periods 

 species of Oameleopavdalis roamed in Asia and Europe. Geology gives a wider 

 range to the horse and elephant kinds than was cognizant to the student of living 

 species only. The existing Equidds and Elephantidse properly belong, or ar« 

 limited to, the Old World ; and the elephants to Asia and Afiica, the species of 

 the two continents, being quite distinct. The horse, as Buffjn remarked, carried 

 terror to the eye of the indigenous Americans, viewing the animal for the first 

 time, as it proudly bore their Spanish conqueror. But a species of Equus, co- 

 existed with the Megatherium and Megalonyx, in both South and North America, 

 and perished apparently with them, before the human period. Elephants are 

 dependant chiefly upon trees for food. One species now finals conditions of exist- 

 ence in the rich forests of tropical Asia ; and a second species in those of tropical 

 Africa. Why, we may ask, should not a third be living at the expense of the still 

 more luxuriant vegetation watered by the Oronooka, the Essequibo, the Amazon, 

 and the La Plata, in tropical America ? Geology tells us that at least two kinds 

 of elephant {Mastodon Andium and M. Humholdtii) formerly did derive their 

 subsistence, along with the great Megatheroid beasts, from that abundant source. 

 We may infer that the general growth of large forests, and the absence of deadly 

 enemies, were the main conditions of the former existence of elephantine animals 



