Provinces of the Animal World. 301 
temperate zone, included between the isotherms of 32° and 74° 
Fahr., characterized by its pine forests, its amentacea, its maples, 
its walnuts, and its fruit trees, and from the midst of which arise, 
like islands, lofty mountain chains or high table-lands, clothed with 
a vegetation which in many respects recals that of the glacial re- 
gions. The geographical distribution of animals in this zone forms 
several closely-connected but distinct combinations. It is the 
country of the terrestrial bear, of the wolf, the fox, the weasel, the 
marten, the otter, the lynx, the horse and the ass, the boar, and a 
great number of stags, deer, elk, goats, sheep, bulls, hares, squirrels, 
rats, &c., to which are added, southward, a few representatives of 
the tropical zone. 
Whenever this zone is not modified by extensive and high table- 
lands and mountain chains, we may distinguish in it four secondary 
zones, approximating gradually to the character of the tropics, and 
presenting therefore a greater diversity in the types of its southern 
representatives than we find among those of its northern boundaries. 
We have, first, adjoining the Arctics, a sub-Arctic zone, with an al- 
most uniform appearance in the Old as well as the New World, in 
which pine forests prevail, the home of the moose; next, a cold 
temperate zone, in which amentaceous trees are combined with pines, 
the home of the fur animals; next, a warm temperate zone, in 
which the pines recede, whilst to the prevailing amentaceous trees 
a variety of evergreens are added, the chief seat of the culture of 
our fruit trees, and of the wheat; and a sub-tropical zone, in which 
a number of tropical forms are combined with those characteristic 
of the warm temperate zone. Yet there is throughout the whole of 
the temperate zone one feature prevailing—the repetition, under 
corresponding latitudes, but under different longitudes, of the same 
genera and families, represented in each botanical or zoological pro- 
vince by distinct so-called analogous or representative species, with 
a very few subordinate types peculiar to each province ; for it is not 
until we reach the tropical zone that we find distinct types prevail- 
ing in each fauna and flora, Again, owing to the inequalities of 
the surface, the secondary zones are more or less blended into one 
another ; as, for instance, in the table-lands of Central Asia and 
western North America, where the whole temperate zone pre- 
serves the features of a cold temperate region; or the colder zones 
may appear like islands rising in the midst of the warmer ones, 
as the Pyrenees, the Alps, &c., the summits of which partake of 
the peculiarities of the Arctic and sub-Arctic zones, whilst the 
valleys at their base are characterized by the flora and the fauna 
of the cold or warm temperate zones. It may be proper to remark, 
in this connection, that the study of the laws regulating the geo- 
graphical distribution of natural families of animals and plants 
upon the whole surface of our globe differs entirely from that of the 
