360 



DEIFTING OF ANIMALS 



[Ch. XXXIX. 



is -aniversally known to the inhabitants of these elevated tracts, 

 while to those of the plains it is as strange as an animal from 

 a foreign country. In mj visits to the mountainous districts 

 I uniformly met with it ; and, as far as the information of the 



Now, if asked to conjecture how the Myd 



mountains 



mountains 



say that, before the island was peopled by man, by whom their 

 numbers are now thinned, they may occasionally have multi- 

 plied so as to be forced to collect together and migrate : in 

 which case, notwithstanding the slowness of their motions 

 some few would succeed in reaching another mountain, some 

 twenty, or even, perhaps, fifty miles distant ; for although the 

 climate of the h ot intervening plains would be unfavourable 

 to them, they might support it for a time, and would find there 

 abundance of insects on which they feed. Volcanic eruptions, 



summits 



those lofty cones with sterile sand and ashes. 



may 



mi 



if ting of animals on ice-ji 



mammalia 



-The power of the terrestrial 



■/ J ■ ' — — rs- - — w — w 



stated that the same species is scarcely ever common to 

 districts widely separated by the ocean. If there be some 

 exceptions to this rule, they generally admit of explanation ; 

 for there are natural 



means 



may 



wear a wide passage through a neck of land, leaving indi- 

 viduals as a species on each side of the new channel. Polar 

 bears are known to have been frequently drifted on the ice 



m 



distances, for Captain Parry, on the return of his ships 



met with a bear swimmin 



m 



shores, which were about 



t 



Near 



the east coast of Greenland,' observes Scoresby, ' they have 

 been seen on the ice in such quantities, that they were com- 



; and they are often 



common 



* Horsfield, Zoological Researches in. f Append, to Parry's Second Voyage 



Java, No. ii., from which the figure is years 1819-20. 

 tak en . 





