14 ON THE GEOGRAPHY OF ANIMALS. 



exceptionsj 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 difiPerent; while those, again, of 

 Asia, are formed upon a totally different model. We 

 might fiU 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. 



