50 



ISLAND LIFE. 



[fart I. 



exists between the faunas of North America and Europe is 

 of a very distinct nature from that which connects together 

 Western Europe and North-eastern Asia in the bonds of 

 zoological unity. 



Definition and Characteristic Groups of the Neotropiccd Region. 

 — The Neotropical region requires very little definition, since it 

 comprises the whole of America south of the Nearctic region, 

 with the addition of the Antilles or West Indian Islands. Its 

 zoological peculiarities are almost as marked as those of 

 Australia, which, however, it far exceeds in the extreme richness 

 and variety of all its forms of life. To show how distinct it is 

 from all the other regions of the globe, we need only enumerate 

 some of the best known and more conspicuous of the animal 

 forms which are peculiar to it. Such are, among mammalia — • 

 the prehensile-tailed monkeys and the marmosets, the blood- 

 sucking bats, the coati-mundis, the peccaries, the llamas and 

 alpacas, the chinchillas, the agoutis, the sloths, the armadillos, 

 and the ant-eaters ; a series of types more varied, and more 

 distinct from those of the rest of the world than any other con- 

 tinent can boast of. Among birds we have the charming sugar- 

 birds, forming the family Coerebidse, the immense and wonder - 

 fully varied group of tanagers, the exquisite little manakins, 

 and the gorgeously-coloured chatterers ; the host of tree-creepers 

 of the family Dendrocolaptidse, the wonderful toucans, the puff- 

 birds, jacamars, todies and motmots ; the marvellous assemblage 

 of four hundred distinct kinds of humming-birds, the gorgeous 

 macaws, the curassows, the trumpeters, and the sun-bitterns. 

 Here again there is no other continent or region that can 

 produce such an assemblage of remarkable and perfectly distinct 

 groups of birds ; and no less wonderful is its richness in species, 

 since these fully equal, if they do not surpass, those of the two 

 great tropical regions of the Eastern Hemisphere (the Ethiopian 

 and the Oriental) combined. 



As an additional indication of the distinctness and isolation of 

 the Neotropical region from all others, and especially from the 

 whole Eastern Hemisphere, we must say something of the 

 otherwise widely distributed groups which are absent. Among 

 mammalia we have first the order Insectivora, entirely absent 



