CHAP, in.] 



ZOOLOGICAL REGIONS. 



51 



from South America, though a few species are found in Central 

 America and the West Indies ; the Viverridse or civet family is 

 wholly wanting, as are every form of sheep, oxen, or antelopes • 

 while the swine, the elephants, and the rhinoceroses of the old 

 world are represented by the diminutive peccaries and tapirs. 



Among birds we have to notice the absence of tits, true 

 flycatchers, shrikes, sun-birds, starlings, larks (except a solitary 

 species in the Andes), rollers, bee-eaters, and pheasants, while 

 warblers are very scarce, and the almost cosmopolitan wagtails 

 are represented by a single species of pipit. 



We must also notice the preponderance of low or archaic 

 types among the animals of South America. Edentates, 

 marsupials, and rodents form the majority of the terrestrial 

 mammalia; while such higher groups as the carnivora and 

 hoofed animals are exceedingly deficient. Among birds a 

 low type of Passeres, characterised by the absence of the 

 singing muscles, is excessively prevalent, the enormous groups 

 of the ant-thrushes, tyrants, tree-creepers, manakins, and 

 chatterers belonging to it. The Picarise (a lower group) also 

 prevail to a far greater extent than in any other regions, both 

 in variety of forms and number of species ; and the chief 

 representatives of the gallinaceous birds — the curassows and 

 tinamous, are believed to be allied, the former to the brush- 

 turkeys of Australia, the latter (very remotely) to the ostriches, 

 two of the least developed types of birds. 



Whether, therefore, we consider its richness in peculiar forms 

 of animal life, its enormous variety of species, its numerous 

 deficiencies as compared with other parts of the world, or the 

 prevalence of a low type of organisation among its higher 

 animals, the Neotropical region stands out as undoubtedly the 

 most remarkable of the great zoological divisions of the earth. 



In reptiles, amphibia, fresh-water fishes, and insects, this 

 region is equally peculiar, but we need not refer to these here, 

 our only object now being to establish by a sufficient number 

 of well-known and easily remembered examples, the distinctness 

 of each region from all others, and its unity as a whole. The 

 former has now been sufficiently demonstrated, but it may be 

 well to say a few words as to the latter point. 



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