212 



PATAGONIA. 



Jan. 1834, 



animals either in Europe or South America^ yet destroyed 

 many quadrupeds in regions now characterized by frigid, 

 temperate, and warrn^ chmates ! These cases of extinction 

 forcibly recal the idea (I do not wish to draw any close 

 analogy) of certain fruit-trees, which, it has been asserted, 

 though grafted on young stems, planted in varied situations, 

 and fertilized by the richest manures, yet at one period, 

 have all withered away and perished. A fixed and deter- 

 mined length of life has in such cases been given to thousands 

 and thousands of buds (or individual germs), although pro- 

 duced in long succession. Among the greater number of 

 animals, each individual appears nearly independent of its 

 kind ; yet all of one kind may be bound together by com- 

 mon laws, as well as a certain number of individual buds 

 in the tree, or polypi in the Zoophyte. 



I will add one other remark. We see that whole series 

 of animals, which have been created with peculiar kinds of 

 organization, are confined to certain areas; and we can 

 hardly suppose these structures are only adaptations to 

 peculiarities of climate or country; for otherwise, animals 

 belonging to a distinct type, and introduced by man, would 

 not succeed so admirably, even to the extermination of the 

 aborigines. On such grounds it does not seem a necessary 

 conclusion, that the extinction of species, more than their 

 creation, should exclusively depend on the nature (altered 

 by physical changes) of their country. All that at present 

 can be said with certainty, is that, as with the individual, so 

 with the species, the hour of life has run its course, and is 

 spent. 



* The Elephas primigenus is thus circumstanced, having been found in 

 Yorkshire (associated with recent shells : Lyell, vol. i., chap, vi.), in 

 Siberia, and in the warm regions of lat. 31°, in North America. The 

 remains of the Mastodon occur in Paraguay (and I believe in Brazil, in 

 lat. 12°), as well as in the temperate plains south of the Plata. 



