18 GEOGKAPHICAL DISTKIBUTIOK. 



Andes, and to the extinct crater of Chiriqui, in the province of 

 Panama, Colombia. The Loddigesia mirabilis, one of the most 

 beautiful of the Trochilidse, has been observed thus far only at 

 Chachapoyas, in the Peruvian Andes, and even there it occurs so 

 rarely as to have been obtained but once during the period of forty 

 years following its first discovery.' 



Too much stress should not, however, be laid upon what would 

 appear to be the absolute localisation of a species, since such sup- 

 posed localisation is frequently only the expression of our defective 

 knowledge in the premises. In the case of the famous South 

 American oil-bird, or guacharo (Steatornis Caripensis), for example, 

 which was for a long time considered to inhabit solely a cave near 

 Carip6, in the province of Cumana, Venezuela, more recent research 

 has revealed a comparatively broad area of distribution, which 

 embraces Sarayacu and Caxamarca in Peru, Antioquia in Colombia, 

 and the Island of Trinidad. The garden-mouse (Mus hortulanus), 

 which for some twenty years was known only from the botanic gar- 

 dens of Odessa, Russia, has been found in abundance in Kaschau 

 and several other towns of Northern Hungary.' So, likewise, in 

 the case of the anthropoid apes of the genus Troglodytes, which 

 were formerly supposed to be restricted to the western regions of 

 the African continent, but which the more recent explorations of 

 Schweinfurth, Von Heuglin, and others have shown to inhabit East 

 Central Africa as well. 



Of species having a very broad distribution — excluding such as 

 have been transplanted through the agency of man — ^may be cited 

 the African elephant, whose domain extends over the greater part 

 of the African continent south of the Sahara Desert ; the tiger, 

 whose habitat embraces the entire east and west extent of Asia, 

 from the Caucasus to the Island of Saghalien ; and the ermine, which 

 is found throughout the greater portion of the temperate and boreal 

 regions of the Northern Hemisphere. The leopard ranges over entire 

 Africa and throughout most of Southern Asia, having, with perhaps 

 the exception of the common European wolf, whose identity with 

 the various forms of American wolves is conceded by many natural- 

 ists, and some of the smaller carnivores, the most wide-spread dis- 

 tribution of any mammalian species. There is but little question 

 as to the identity of the North American and European species of 

 brown-bear, Arctic fox, glutton, ermine, weasel, elk, reindeer, and 



