50 
ISLAND LIFE. 
[part 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 Neotropical 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 Coerebidae, 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 Dendrocolaptidae, 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 
