DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMALS. 
[PART I. 
GO 
along with Australasia and South America ; and that a Circum- 
polar Province might be conveniently recognised as of equal 
rank with the Palaearctic and Nearctic provinces. 
In 1866, Mr. Andrew Murray published a large and copiously 
illustrated volume on the Geographical Distribution of Mam- 
mals , in which he maintains that the great and primary 
mammalian regions are only four : 1st. The Pakearctic region 
of Mr. Sclater, extended to include the Sahara and Nubia ; 
2nd. the Indo-African region, including the Indian and Ethiopian 
regions of Mr. Sclater; 3rd. the Australian region (unaltered); 
4th. the American region, including both North and South 
America. These are the regions as described by Mr. Murray, 
but his coloured map of t! Great Mammalian Regions ” show's 
all Arctic America to a little south of the Isothermal of 32° 
Fahr. as forming with Europe and North Asia one great region. 
At the meeting of the British Association at Exeter in 1869, 
Mr. W. T. Blanford read a paper on the Fauna of British India, 
in which he maintained that a large portion of the peninsula 
of India had derived its Fauna mainly from Africa ; and that the 
term “ Indian region ” of Mr. Sclater was misleading, because 
India proper, if it belongs to it at all, is the least typical portion 
of it. He therefore proposes to call it the “ Malayan region,” 
because in the Malay countries it is most highly developed. 
Ceylon and the mountain ranges of Southern India have marked 
Malay affinities. 
In 1871 Mr. E. Blyth published in Nature “ A suggested new 
Division of the Earth into Zoological Regions,” in which he 
indicates seven primary divisions or regions, subdivided into 
twenty-six sub -regions. The seven regions are defined as 
follows: 1. The Boreal region; including the whole of the 
Pakearctic and Nearctic regions of Mr. Sclater along with the 
West Indies, Central America, the whole chain of the Andes, 
with Chili and Patagonia. 2. The Columbian region ; consisting 
of the remaining part of South America. 3. The Ethiopian 
region ; comprising besides that region of Mr. Sclater, the valley 
of the Jordan, Arabia, and the desert country towards India, 
with all the plains and table lands of India and the northern 
