A LAND OF SKELETONS 
Next to Australia, which, as regards its fauna, stands quite 
apart from the whole of the rest of the world, South America 
possesses a greater number of peculiar types of animals than 
any other region at the present day. A traveller, for 
instance, starting from Europe may wander eastwards across 
the northern part of Asia as far as Japan without ceasing to 
meet with types of mammals and birds perfectly familiar 
to him, while the same is, to a great extent, the case if 
his footsteps are directed to India or Africa. It is true, 
indeed, that in both the latter countries he will come across 
creatures like elephants and rhinoceroses, which are now 
unknown in Europe, while in Africa he will be confronted 
by hippopotamuses, giraffes, okapis, and ostriches. All 
these animals, however, once existed in Europe during the 
later portions of geological history, and may accordingly be 
counted as pertaining to the European fauna. Still more 
striking is this similarity of the fauna with that of Europe 
if the traveller’s route happen to lie across the northern 
half of the New World, where he may meet with many 
mammals, such as the bison, Rocky Mountain sheep, grizzly 
bear, wapiti, elk, reindeer, wolf, and fox, more or less closely 
allied to Old World forms. On the other hand, when South 
America is reached, it will be found that not only are all 
the mammals and birds specifically different from those of 
Europe, but likewise that many of them belong to genera 
69 
