AFRICA AND ITS ANIMALS 137 
for example, the creatures inhabiting the open districts of | 
the Punjab and the North-West Provinces display re- 
markable differences from those dwelling in the forests of 
Southern India (the home of the strange loris); while the 
dwellers in the jungly tract of the south-western districts 
of Bengal are equally distinct from those of either of the 
other areas. 
Seeing, then, that while slight differences are observable 
in the local faunas of such a small area as the British 
Islands, and that much more important ones characterise 
the different zoological provinces of the vastly larger extent 
of country forming British India, it is but natural to suppose 
that distinctions of still higher value would be characteristic 
of different parts of Africa, accordingly as they differ from 
one another in climate, and consequently in vegetable 
productions. 
As a matter of fact, such differences do occur to a most 
marked degree; but when the vast superiority of Africa 
over India is taken into consideration, the marvel is that 
the fauna of the greater part of that area is not more 
dissimilar than it is, and that it has been found possible 
to include the more typical portion of the continent in one 
great zoological region or province. 
But the reader will naturally inquire what is meant by 
calling one portion of a continent more typical than the 
rest. As has been pointed out in the last article, Northern 
Africa has, so far as its animals are concerned, been cut off | 
from the districts lying south of the Tropic of Cancer by 
the great barrier formed by the Sahara; and as the animals 
of the districts to the north of that desert are for the 
most part of a European type, while Southern Europe and 
Northern Africa were evidently joined by land at no very 
distant epoch of the earth’s history, the districts north of 
