eae 
138 MOSTLY MAMMALS 
the Sahara are for zoological purposes regarded as part 
of Europe and Asia. Typical, or Ethiopian Africa, as it is 
more generally termed, includes, therefore, only such portion 
of the continent as lies to the south of the northern tropic. 
But some critical reader may perhaps be led to remark 
that some at least of the animals of Northern Africa 
are common to the south; the lion, whose range extends 
from Algeria to the Cape, affording a case in point. To 
this it may be replied that, popular prejudice notwith- 
standing, the lion cannot in any sense be looked upon as 
a characteristic African animal. Although year by year 
growing rarer, it to this day still lingers on in certain parts 
of Western India, while it is likewise found in Persia and 
Mesopotamia, and within the historic period was common in 
South-Eastern Europe. At a still earlier epoch, as attested 
by its fossilised remains, it was an inhabitant of our own 
island. It may, therefore, to a certain degree be regarded 
as a cosmopolitan animal, which may have obtained entrance 
into Africa by more than one route. In a minor degree 
the same may be said of the hippopotamus, which was 
formerly found in the lower reaches of the Nile, and at 
a much earlier epoch in many parts of Europe, inclusive 
of Britain. Being an aquatic animal, it can avail itself of 
routes of communication which are closed to purely terrestrial 
creatures. 
Of the fauna of typical Africa, as a whole, some of the 
most striking features are of a negative nature; that is to 
say, certain groups which are widely spread in most other 
districts of the Old World are conspicuous by their absence. 
This deficiency is most marked in the case of bears and 
deer, neither of which are represented throughout the whole 
of this vast expanse of country. Pigs allied to the wild , 
swine of Europe and India are likewise lacking, their place | \ 
