30 GEOGKAPHICAL DISTRIBUTIONS^. 



Families with restricted ranges, like genera and species, are of 

 infrequent occurrence, broad distribution being with them the rule 

 rather than the exception. Nevertheless, owing to the peculiarily 

 isolated position of the Australian fauna, there are among the land 

 Mammalia only two families which can lay claim to being strictly 

 cosmopolitan. These are the mice (Muridse) among rodents, and 

 the Vespertilionidse among bats, the former being universally dis- 

 tributed throughout the globe, if we except some of the island 

 groups of Australasia. The Vespertilionidffi have representatives 

 almost everywhere, being apparently limited, as stated by Wal- 

 lace, only by the necessities of procuring insect food. Among 

 birds, examples of practically cosmopolitan families are presented 

 by the thrushes, warblers, crows, swallows, king-fishers, goatsuckers, 

 and pigeons. The hawks, owls, ducks, and gulls are cosmopolitan 

 par excellence, being found in almost every habitable locality 

 throughout the globe, whether on the mainland or on the most 

 distantly removed oceanic islands. The extensive family Fringil- 

 lidse (finches, buntings), as now generally constituted by ornitholo- 

 gists, with upwards of seventy genera and five hundred species, 

 appears to have no representative in Australia, all the finch-like 

 birds of that continent belonging to the family of the weavers 

 (Ploceidse). 



As with genera and species, so likewise in the case of families, 

 we have numerous instances of groups occupying discontinuous 

 areas. In the class of Mammalia, for example, the swine (Suidse), 

 which are so extensively distributed throughout both the tropical 

 and temperate regions of the Old World, have no representatives in 

 the New World north of about the thirty-fourth parallel of latitude 

 — the Red River, in Arkansas — although they have two species (of 

 peccary) in the region south of that line. The Orycteropodidse 

 have a solitary representative in the Cape District, the aard-vark, or 

 Cape ant-eater (Orycteropus Capensis), and another in the interior of 

 Northeast Africa and in Senegal, the form occurring in the latter 

 region being possibly a third species." The tapirs, constituting 

 the family Tapiridse, have, as already stated, their representatives 

 on opposite sides of the globe, one species inhabiting the Malay 

 Peninsula and some of the adjacent islands, and the four or five 

 others the tropical forests of Central and South America. The 

 chevrotains, or deer-like animals of the family TragulidiE, abound 



