92 TUNGU. Chap. XXI. 



scampered back to Palling, over rocks and hills, through 

 bogs and streams ; and though the snow was so 

 blinding that no object could be distinguished, he 

 brought me to the tents with unerring instinct, as straight 

 as an arrow. . 



Wild animals are few in kind and rare in individuals, 

 at Tungu and elsewhere on this frontier ; though there is 

 no lack of cover and herbage. This must be owing to the 

 moist cold atmosphere ; and it reminds me that a similar 

 want of animal life is characteristic of those climates at the 

 level of the sea, which I have adduced as bearing a great 

 analogy to the Himalaya, in lacking certain natural orders of 

 plants. Thus, New Zealand and Fuegia possess, the former 

 no land animal but a rat, and the latter very few indeed, 

 and none of any size. Such is also the case in Scotland 

 and Norway. Again, on the damp west coast of Tasmania, 

 quadrupeds are rare ; whilst the dry eastern half of the 

 island once swarmed with opossums and kangaroos. A 

 few miles north of Tungu, the sterile and more lofty pro- 

 vinces of Tibet abound in wild horses, antelopes, hares, 

 foxes, marmots, and numerous other quadrupeds ; although 

 their altitude, climate, and scanty vegetation are apparently 

 even more unsuited to support such numbers of animals 

 of so large a size than the karroos of South Africa, and 

 the steppes of Siberia and Arctic America, which simi- 

 larly abound in animal life. The laws which govern the 

 distribution of large quadrupeds seem to be intimately 

 connected with those of climate; and we should have 

 regard to these considerations in our geological specula- 

 tions, and not draw hasty conclusions from the absence 

 of the remains of large herbivora in formations disclosing a 

 redundant vegetation. 



Besides the wild sheep found on these mountains, a species 



