57 
1877*] Animal Geography. 
lachian, including the valley of the Mississipi and all the 
eastern and southern States of the American Union ; and, 
lastly, the Canadian, comprehending British North America 
(except perhaps Columbia), the former Russian territory, 
Greenland and the Polar lands, so far as they have any 
animal life at all.* These sub-regions, as Mr. Wallace 
admits, are not so well characterised as might be desired, 
and their boundaries, and even their number, are therefore 
open to doubt. 
In the Neotropical region the four divisions are— the 
Andean, comprising Patagonia, the chain of the Andes, and 
the Pacific Coast up to the Equator ; the Central American, 
with the hot low-lying coasts of Mexico ; the Antillean, in- 
cluding all the West Indies except Tobago and Trinidad. 
The remaining sub-region comprises these two islands, 
Guayana, Venezuela, and the greater part of New Grenada 
and Ecuador, those portions of Peru and Bolivia which lie 
on the eastern slope of the Andes, the vast empire of Brazil, 
and a part of Paraguay and the States of La Plata. This 
arrangement has not escaped criticism. It has been pointed 
out that the last sub-region, superficially very large in pro- 
portion to the three others, and greater still in the amount 
of fruitful land which it contains and in its multitude of 
animal species, may probably be found less homogeneous 
than Mr. Wallace supposes. We do not think that the 
attention of naturalists has been sufficiently directed to a 
passage in which Sir R. Schomburgk, speaking of the bril- 
liant flora of the mountains of British Guayana, notices the 
almost total absence of inseCts. The remark has been made 
that this statement, if confirmed, agrees ill with certain 
modern views on the part played by inseCts in the fructifi- 
cation of plants and on the use of brilliant colouration in 
flowers. Waterton, whose testimony would have been inva- 
luable, unfortunately paid little attention to inseCts. t 
It is instructive to compare the West Indian islands with 
the Malay Archipelago. Both these groups are closely 
* We have always been of opinion that the extremely high latitudes would 
be found completely devoid of a fauna, and we observe with much interest 
that this view is decidedly confirmed by the results of the late Polar Expedi- 
tion. The explorers appear to have reached, and even passed, the boundaries 
of animal life. The bearing of this fad upon the notion of a circumpolar 
zoological region is obvious. 
f Mr. Norman Moore, in his edition of Waterton’s “ Essays,” declares that 
Schomburgk “ has copied whole pages from the ‘ Wanderings ’ with no other 
change than the transformation of an interesting into a heavy style, and, not- 
withstanding all his obligations to Waterton, he has never once mentioned 
him in his books with resped.” 
