CHAP. III.] 
ZOOLOGICAL LEGIONS. 
51 
from South America, though a few species are found in Central 
America and the West Indies ; the Viverridae 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. 
E 2 
