THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS 67 



dental " diflferences can never, he thinks, account for the 

 " essential " differences between the animals of America 

 and those of Europe. 



It may be doubted whether any speculator who 

 accepted the literal truth of the book of Genesis could 

 have framed a better explanation of the observed facts. 



Acosta smiles at Aristotle and other ancient philo- 

 sophers, who had taught that the torrid zone was un- 

 inhabitable by reason of its heat. I have lived there 

 a long time, he said, and found it very pleasant. Only 

 after much learned disquisition does he bring out one 

 very material fact. Equatorial America is traversed by 

 one of the loftiest mountain-ranges in the world, and 

 Acosta spent most of his time in Peru at a greater 

 elevation than the highest summits of the Pyrenees. 

 But even the shores of equatorial America are habitable, 

 as he shows. 



His discussion of the trade-winds is based upon solid 

 facts, and his explanation is quite tolerable, though he 

 is of course wrong in attributing them to the diurnal 

 motion of the celestial spheres, which carry the atmo- 

 sphere round with them. 



Certain plants and animals of Peru and Mexico are 

 described briefly, especially such as are important to 

 man. We miss some remarkable features of the flora 

 and fauna ; there is, for example, no mention of the 

 great cactuses, nor of the many singular water-birds 

 of the mountain-lakes, such as Lake Titicaca ; nor of 

 opossums, which abound, not in the mountains (most 

 familiar to Acosta), but in the wooded plains ; the 

 condor is dismissed in a few words. Acosta would have 

 written a very big book if he had told all that he knew. 



The notices of maize, potatoes, cassava, tomatoes, 

 bananas, cotton, and pine-apples we may pass by as long 



