have been reduced to great exactness by observations continued since
the time of Buffon, who first began to generalize about a century
ago in that way, noting the peculiarities of the species of South
American animals. The most important extension of this branch of
zoology has been due to recent researches and discoveries of extinct
species of the class Mammalia; and it is chiefly in relation to the
modifications of zoological ideas produced by palæontology that a few
brief remarks will here be made.
The Quadrumana, or order of apes, monkeys, and lemurs, consist of
three chief divisions--Catarhines, Platyrhines, and Strepsirhines.
The first family is peculiar to the Old World; the second to South
America; the third has the majority of its species and its chief
genus (Lemur) exclusively in Madagascar. Out of twenty-six known
species of Lemuridæ, only six are Asiatic and three are African.
The Catarhine monkeys include the Macaques, most of which are
Asiatic, a few are African and one European; the Cercopitheques,
most of which are African and a few Asiatic; and other genera which
characterize one or other continent exclusively. Thus the true
baboons (Papio) are African, as are the thumbless monkeys (Colobus)
and the chimpanzees (Troglodytes). The Semnopithecus, gibbons, and
orangs are peculiarly Asiatic. Palæontology has shown that a macaque,
a gibbon, and an orang existed during the older Tertiary times in
Europe, and that Semnopithecus existed in Miocene times in India.
But all the fossil remains of Quadrumana in the Old World belong to
the family Catarhina, which is still exclusively confined to that
great division of dry land. The tailless macaque (Innus silvanus)
of Gibraltar may have existed in that part of the Old World before
Europe was separated by the Straits of Gibraltar from Africa. Fossil
remains of Quadrumana have been discovered in South America; they
indicate Platyrhine forms: a species, for example, allied to the
howlers (Mycetes), but larger than any now known to exist, has left
its remains in Brazil.
While adverting to the geographical distribution of Quadrumana,
I would contrast the peculiarly limited range of the orangs and
chimpanzees with the cosmopolitan powers of mankind. The two species
of orang (Pithecus) are confined to Borneo and Sumatra; the two
species of chimpanzee (Troglodytes) are limited to an intertropical
tract of the western part of Africa. They appear to be inexorably
bound by climatal influences regulating the assemblage of certain
trees and the production of certain fruits. With all our care, in
regard to choice of food, clothing, and contrivances for artificially
maintaining the chief physical conditions of their existence, the
healthiest specimens of orang or chimpanzee, brought over in the
vigor of youth, perish within a period never exceeding three years,
and usually much shorter in England. By what metamorphoses, may we
ask, has the alleged humanized chimpanzee or orang been brought to
endure all climates? The advocates of transmutation have failed
to explain them. Certain it is that those physical differences
in cerebral, dental, and osteological structure which place, in
my estimate of them, the genus Homo in a distinct group of the
mammalian class, zoologically of higher value than the order, are
associated with equally contrasted powers of endurance of different
climates, whereby man has become a denizen of every part of the globe
from the Torrid to the Arctic zones.
Climate rigidly limits the range of the Quadrumana latitudinally;
creational and geographical causes limit their range in longitude.
Distinct genera represent each other in the same latitudes of the New
and Old Worlds; and also, in a great degree, in Africa and Asia. But
the development of an orang out of a chimpanzee, or reciprocally, is
physiologically inconceivable.
The order Ruminantia is principally represented by Old World species,
of which 162 have been defined, while only 24 species have been
discovered in the New World, and none in Australia, New Guinea, New
Zealand, or the Polynesian Isles.
The camelopard is now peculiar to Africa; the musk-deer to Africa
and Asia; out of fifty defined species of antelope, only one is
known in America, and none in the central and southern divisions
of the New World. The bison of North America is distinct from the
bison of Europe. The musk-ox alone, peculiar for its limitation, to
high northern latitudes, roams over the Arctic coasts of both Asia
and America. The deer tribe are more widely distributed. The camels
and dromedaries of the Old World are represented by the llamas and
vicunas of the New. As, in regard to a former (Tertiary) zoological
period, the fossil Camilidæ of Asia are of the genus Camilus, so
those of America are of the genus Auchenia. This geographical
restriction ruled prior to any evidence of man’s existence.
Palæontology has expanded our knowledge of the range of the giraffe:
during Miocene or old Pliocene periods, species of Camelopardalis
roamed in Asia and Europe. Passing to the non-ruminant Artiodactyles,
geology has also taught us that the hippopotamus was not always
confined, as now, to African rivers, but bathed, during Pliocene
times, in those of Asia and Europe. But no evidence has yet been had
that the giraffe or hippopotamus were ever other than Old World forms
of Ungulata.
With respect to the hog tribe, we find that the true swine (Sus) of
the Old World are represented by peccaries (Dicotyles) in the New;
and geology has recently shown that Tertiary species of Dicotyles
existed in North as well as South America. But no true Sus has been
found fossil in either division of the New World, nor have the
Dicotyles been found fossil in the Old World of the geographer. One
of the earliest forms of the European rhinoceros was devoid of the
nasal weapon.
Geology gives a wider range to the horse and elephant kinds than
was cognizant to the student of living species only. The existing
Equidæ and Elephantidæ properly belong, or are limited, to the Old
World; and the elephants to Asia and Africa, the species of the two
continents being quite distinct. The horse, as Buffon remarked,
carried terror to the eye of the indigenous Americans, viewing
the animal for the first time, as it proudly bore their Spanish
conqueror. But a species of Equus coexisted with the Megatherium and
Megalonyx in both South and North America, and perished apparently
with them, before the human period. Elephants are dependent chiefly
upon trees for food. One species now finds conditions of existence
in the rich forests of tropical Asia; and a second species in those
of tropical Africa. Why, we may ask, should not a third be living
at the expense of the still more luxuriant vegetation watered by
the Orinoco, the Essequibo, the Amazon, and La Plata, in tropical
America? Geology tells us that at least two kinds of elephant
(Mastodon Andium and Mastodon Humboldtii) formerly did derive their
subsistence, along with the great Megatheroid beasts, from that
abundant source. Nay, more; at least two kinds of elephant (Mastodon
ohioticus and Elephas texianus) existed in the warm and temperate
latitudes of North America. Twice as many species of mastodon and
elephant, distinct from all the others, roamed in Pliocene times in
the same latitude of Europe. At a later or Pleistocene period, a
huge elephant, clothed with wool and hair, obtained its food from
hardy trees, such as now grow in the 65th degree of north latitude;
and abundant remains of this Elephas primigenius (as it has been
prematurely called, since it was the last of the British elephants)
have been found in temperate and high northern latitudes in Europe,
Asia, and America. This, like other Arctic animals, was peculiar
in its family for its longitudinal range. The musk buffalo was
its contemporary in England and Europe, and still lingers in the
northernmost parts of America.
I have received evidences of elephantine species from China and
Australia, proving the proboscidian pachyderms to have been the
most cosmopolitan of hoofed herbivorous quadrupeds. Geology extends
the geographical range of the sloths and armadillos from South to
North America; but the deductions from recent rich discoveries of
huge terrestrial forms of sloth, of gigantic armadillos, and large
anteaters go to establish the fact that these peculiar features of
the order Bruta have ever been, as they are now, peculiar to America;
that several genera, including the larger species, have perished; and
that the range of their still existing diminutive representatives has
been reduced to the southern division of the New World.
Australia, which in extent of dry land merits to be regarded as
a fifth continent, has a more restricted and peculiar character
of aboriginal mammalian population than South America. It is
emphatically the “province” of those quadrupeds the females of which
are provided with a pouch for the transport and protection of their
prematurely formed young.
One genus of Marsupialia (Didelphys or opossums, properly so called)
is peculiar to America, and is there the sole representative of the
order. A small kangaroo, and a few phalangers, exist in islands
that link the Malayan Archipelago with the Australian world. All
the other marsupial genera are found in Australasia, comprising New
Guinea, Australia, and Tasmania. The largest and most destructive of
carnivorous marsupials are peculiar to Tasmania.
The sum of all the evidence from the fossil world in Australia
proves its mammalian population to have been essentially the same
in Pleistocene, if not Pliocene, times as now; only represented, as
the Edentate mammals in South America were then represented, by more
numerous genera, and much more gigantic species than now exist.
In the Miocene and Eocene tertiary deposits, marsupial fossils of the
American genus Didelphys have been found, both in France and England;
and they are associated with tapirs like that of America. In a more
ancient geological period, remains of marsupials, some insectivorous,
others with teeth, have been found in the upper Oolite.
Thus it would seem that the deeper we penetrate the earth, or, in
other words, the further we recede in time, the more completely we
are absolved from the present laws of geographical distribution.
GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMALS
--WILLIAM HUGHES
The great division of the animal kingdom recognized by naturalists is
that into vertebrate and invertebrate animals. Vertebrated animals
are those which possess a spinal bone, to which are attached ribs,
constituting the framework of the entire body. All animals of this
division have red blood. The vertebrate animals comprehend fishes,
reptiles, birds, and mammalia. This last term is inclusive of all
animals that suckle their young, man among the number.
The class mammalia comprehends the following orders: 1. Carnivora
(_flesh-eating_, as the lion, tiger, etc.); 2. Ruminantia (_animals
that chew the cud_, as the camel, ox, sheep, and others); 3.
Pachydermata (_thick-skinned_, as the elephant, horse, etc.); 4.
Rodentia (_gnawing_, as the beaver, squirrel, mice, etc.); 5.
Edentata (_toothless_, as the ant-eater and armadillo); 6. Quadrumma
(_four-handed_, as the ape and monkey tribe); 7. Cherioptera (having
_winged arms_, as bats); 8. Marsupialia (_pouched_, as the kangaroo
and opossum); 9. Cetaceæ (whales, dolphins, and the various seals).
The last-mentioned of these divisions includes members (and those
the largest) of a tribe assigned in popular language to a distinct
division of the animal world--fishes. But the whale and other
creatures of its order possess the distinguishing attribute of the
mammalia--that is, they afford their nutriment from the breast.
The animals belonging to the ruminating and pachydermatous orders are
further distinguished as ungulata, or hoofed, from the well-known
characteristic of their extremities. The domesticated animals that
are used as food by man are almost exclusively derived from this
class. The animals included within the other orders of mammalia are
designated as unguiculata, from their extremities terminating in
claws, or nails.
The invertebrate animals, or those which have no spinal bone, all
have white blood. They are scientifically divided into molluscous
animals, in which the muscles are attached to the skin, with or
without the protection of a shell--such as snails and slugs;
articulated animals, in which the covering of the body is divided
into rings or segments, to the interior of which the muscles are
attached--comprehending all insects and worms; and radiated animals,
in which the organs of motion or sensation radiate from a common
centre--such as star-fish.
The opposite sides of a hill-range, even in cases where the climate
is nearly identical, and the passage from one slope to the other
easy, will often exhibit different conditions of animal life.
Isothermal lines mark--with hardly less precision in the case
of animals than of plants--the range of particular families and
species, in the direction of latitude and elevation alike. The fact
that such is the case testifies strongly to the force of those
instincts with which all animals are endowed, and by which their
habits are regulated. The powers of locomotion possessed by animals
might at first sight seem calculated to favor a wider extension of
geographical range than belongs to vegetables, and in the well-known
instances of migratory species (of which the swallow and other birds
are familiar examples) such is undoubtedly the case. But even these
migrations are confined within a well-defined range, determined by
conditions of climate, and facility of obtaining the necessary food.
Birds in general are separated, as markedly as quadrupeds, in respect
of their habitat, or geographical range. This is equally true,
indeed, in regard to every one of the great classes into which the
animal world is divided. Each zone of the ocean, both in latitude and
in the direction of depth, has its proper forms of life.
To take an instance from land animals, the elephant is confined by
natural instinct within the belt of the warm latitudes, and not more
so by the high temperature which such latitudes alone enjoy than by
the limitation of its necessary food to the regions which are its
proper home. Nowhere else but within or near the tropics is there
found the luxuriant abundance of forest vegetation which the elephant
requires to make sustenance upon. The reindeer, on the other hand, is
as characteristically an inhabitant of polar latitudes, and perishes
if brought within the continued influence of a warmer temperature
than that of his native region. The ibex and the chamois, with some
other animals of the goat tribe, frequent only the highest and least
accessible portions of the mountain region, while various members
of the deer kind range over the lower elevations and the plains
below. Of birds, the condor, or great vulture of the Andes, confines
his range within the region of the highest peaks of the mountain
region, as his European congener--the lammergeyer, or vulture of
the Alps--does in another part of the globe. In the mountainous
portions of Great Britain, the eagles which (notwithstanding the keen
pursuit of the sportsman) frequent the scarcely accessible crags that
surround Loch Maree and other secluded localities of the Highlands,
furnish a similar instance. Again, the shark is the well-known
scourge of the warmer belt of ocean, while the same zone of sea
constitutes--from its high temperature--a region through which the
whale never passes.
It is, besides, equally true of the animal as of the vegetable
kingdom, that every region of the globe has its own proper
inhabitants, different in species, for the most part, from those of
other regions. The animal life of the Old World is markedly different
from that of the New World in correspondent parallels, and under
conditions of climate which are in all important regards analogous.
Even when the genera, or families, are the same, the species are in
nearly all cases distinct. In yet higher measure, the animal life
of Australia differs from that of other divisions of the globe.
Whole orders of the animal world are wanting in Australian zoology,
while the vast majority of its animals belong to a division which is
altogether unrepresented in the continents of the Old World--that is,
the marsupial tribe. The difference is less strongly marked in the
case of the adjacent continents of the Northern Hemisphere than in
the instances of the lands lying south of the equator.
The natural distribution of animals has been importantly modified
by human agency. This is especially the case in regard to
those divisions of the mammalia which comprehend the domestic
quadrupeds--the horse, dog, ox, sheep, and others. Man has carried
these animals with him in his migrations from one region to another,
and has thus introduced new species (and even genera) into lands
where they were previously unknown. The horse, the ox, and the
common sheep, were unknown in the New World prior to the Spanish
discoveries of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, but speedily
became naturalized there, and, in the case of the two first-named,
have long since reverted to a condition of nature. Wild horses roam
by thousands over the savannas and pampas of the western world.
Within a much more recent period, the domestic cattle of Europe have
been introduced into the Australian continent, and have multiplied
there to an extraordinary degree. Efforts are now making to introduce
into Australia both the camel of the Old World and the llama of South
America. The hare and the rabbit of Britain have become naturalized
in the more southwardly of the Australian colonies. Similar efforts
are at the present time directed to the naturalization in the
Australian rivers of the salmon and other fish that belong to the
streams and estuaries of Europe. What has been accomplished, in these
and many similar cases, by the direct efforts of man, has resulted,
in the case of many of the smaller animals, from his involuntary
agency, or from accidental causes. The vessel which conveys a cargo
of native produce from one region to a foreign shore has often
carried with it the germs of life (vegetable as well as animal),
besides, in numerous instances, the smaller members themselves of the
animal world. The insects that were originally confined to one region
have thus become distributed over wide areas of the globe.
A few other of the more obvious differences between the native
zoology of the Old and New Worlds may be adverted to with advantage.
Among carnivorous quadrupeds, the lion, tiger, leopard, panther,
and hyena are confined to the eastern half of the globe. In the
New World, the puma and the jaguar take respectively the places of
the lion and tiger of the Asiatic continent. Of the ruminants, the
camel, the giraffe, and the numerous antelopes are only found within
the Old World. Of the pachydermata, the elephant, the rhinoceros,
the hippopotamus, the horse, the zebra, and the ass are unknown
to the native zoology of the lands lying west of the Atlantic.
The elephant, and also the rhinoceros, belong to Asia and Africa
(the species being different in the case of either continent), the
hippopotamus is African only: the zebra (with its kindred species,
the quagga) is also peculiar to Africa. Both the horse and the ass
probably came originally from Asia. Of the Quadrumana, which are
numerously represented in the zoology of either hemisphere, the
species (and, in most cases, the genera) are distinct. Again, the
opossums of the New World belong to an order (the marsupial) which
is altogether unrepresented in the three continents of the Old
World, but which exhibits its fullest development in the Australian
division of the globe. Numerous other instances might be adduced, but
these will suffice. They serve to show that, in the case of animals
as of plants, particular regions constitute centres of particular
forms of life, which thence spread, within certain limits, around,
still leaving to each such region its strongly marked and typical
characteristics in such regards.
Europe exhibits, in its indigenous zoology, a character less marked
and distinctive than belongs to other divisions of the globe. This is
in some degree the result of its dense population, and the consequent
diminution in the number of wild species, but in a more special
manner results from its conditions of geographical form and position.
Europe is less a continent in itself than an outlying portion of
the vast and unbroken mass of the Asiatic continent. No strongly
marked feature intervenes between the plains of eastern Europe and
those of northern Asia, and within the continuous range of land that
extends, under the same parallels, from the Baltic Sea eastward to
the waters of the Pacific Ocean, the animal life exhibits for the
most part identity of species and genera. The differences between
them, in a vast number of instances, are merely varieties. Many of
the fur-bearing animals are common to all the lands that lie within
the Arctic circle, as many as twenty-seven species being native to
Europe, Asia, and North America alike.
The vast population of Europe has necessitated the rearing of the
domestic quadrupeds in vast numbers, and has been accompanied, in
numerous instances, by the extermination of the wild denizens of the
forest. It would seem from a passage in Herodotus (book vii, 125)
that the lion once frequented the woods of Macedonia. The wild boar,
bear, and the wolf were formerly natives of the British Islands, and
the last named animal has only been exterminated from within their
limits during the last hundred and fifty years. The beaver, long
since banished, was once common on the banks of the Welsh streams.
The fox is only preserved by artificial means, and for the purposes
of the chase. The wildcat, now rarely seen, and that only in the
remoter portions of the Scotch Highlands, was formerly common within
the English forests. The bustard, a bird now rarely seen, was once
met with in huge flights on the plains of Norfolk and Suffolk, while
huge fen-eagles frequented the marshy flats of the adjacent country.
[Illustration: Extinct Fishes, Mollusca, and Crustacea
1, Cephalaspis; 2, Pterichthys; 3, Coccocosteus; 4, Diplacanthus;
5, Holoptychius; 6. Osteolepis; 7, 12, 20, Gasteropods; 8, Crinoid;
9, Eurypterus; 10, 13, 15, 18, 19, Trilobites; 14, 16, 17, 23,
Cephalopods (Ammonites); 21, 22, Spirifers]
These are but few instances of the way in which human agency modifies
the distribution of animal life. On the continent, the extermination
of a particular species is of course more difficult; in numerous
cases is perhaps altogether impossible. The wolf inhabits the forests
of continental Europe, from the high tracts that adjoin the Alps and
the Pyrenees northward to the shores of the Baltic and White Seas.
The wild boar and the bear (three species of the latter--the brown
and the black in the wooded regions of the south, the white polar
bear in the extreme north) are still met with. The urus or wild ox of
the Lithuanian forests, regarded by naturalists as the progenitor of
our common domestic cattle, is even yet found to the eastward of the
Baltic.
Europe, however, has no one of the great families of mammalia that
can be looked on as peculiarly its own, or, in other words, as giving
it a distinctive zoology--like the antelopes of Southern and Western
Asia, the numerous pachyderms of the African continent, the llama
tribe of the New World, or the marsupials of Australia. Of the total
number of European mammalia, not exceeding a hundred and eighty, only
fifty-eight are peculiar to this continent, and none of the larger
quadrupeds is included among them.
The domesticated animals that are so numerously reared in every part
of Europe have probably been, in most cases, derived from indigenous
species. The urus or wild ox has been the parent of the common ox,
and the wild boar of the domestic pig; the goat, and, in the extreme
north, the reindeer, are also native to the European soil. The
moufflon of Sardinia was perhaps the ancestor of at least some of our
breeds of sheep.