388 Professor Owenh Address. 



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. Palseontology has expanded our knowledge 

 of the range of the giraffe; during Miocene or old Pliocene 

 periods, species of Cameleopardalis 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 Equidse and Elephantidse properly belong, or are limited 

 to, the Old World ; and the elephants to Asia and Africa, the 

 species of the two continents, being quite distinct. The horse, as 

 Buffon 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 dependent chiefly upon trees for food. 

 One species now finds conditions of existence 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 Oronooko, the 

 Essequibo, the Amazon, arid the La Plata, in tropical America ? 

 Geology tells us that at least two kinds of elephant [Mastodon 

 Andium and M. Humbolditi) formerly did derive their subsistence 

 along with the great Megatherioid 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 over every part of the 

 globe. 



Ethnology. 



But, with regard to the alleged conformity between the geo- 

 graphical distribution of man and animals, which has of late been 

 systematically enunciated, and made by Agassiz, in Gliddon & 

 Nott's 'Varieties of Mankind,' the basis of deductions as to the 

 origin and distinction of the human varieties, many facts might 

 be cited, aflecting the conformity of the distribution of man with 

 that of the lower animals and plants, as absolutely enunciated in 



