A treatise on the geography and classification of animals

Abstract

ARCTIC REGIONS.(!•) On looking at a map of the world we inhabit, we find that its surface is divided between land and water, continents and oceans ; each, for the most part, thrown together into vast masses, placed under different temperatures, peopled by different races of men, and in- habited by peculiar sorts of animals.Two questions then occur to the mind.What are the causes that 2 ON THE GEOGRAPHY OF ANIMALS.have produced this dissimilarity of creatures ?and, secondly, is there method in all this amazing diversity ?Each of these questions is highly interesting, and de- mands a separate consideration.(2.) Man, although naturally formed to inhabit but one element, is yet enabled, by art, to traverse vast oceans; and, by the peculiarity of his constitution, to live in all climates which produce vegetation.In his natural state, he is among the least qualified of living beings for making rapid transitions from one part of the earth to another, and yet he has peopled its entire surface.A " fair-haired " native of Europe migrates with his family, and settles among the woolly-haired and swarthy inhabitants of Africa.Do his descendants, in the lapse of a century, born under a scorching sun, begin to assume any of the characteristics of the races that surround them } do their lips gradually become thick, their nose flattened, and their complexion black ?Assuredly not ; the supposition is refuted by actual experience to the contrary.Again, does an African diet, or a change of costume, create any change in their form, or their mental perceptions ?are their national characteristics, in short, in any degree lost, so long as their race is preserved pure } Let the Spaniards, settled for more than two centuries among the copper-coloured Indians of Mexico and New Spain,the Dutch boors of Southern Africa, -the descendants of the whites who first settled in the West Indies,above all, the Jews, now scat- tered " among every nation under heaven:" -let these, we repeat, tacitly reply to these questions.Such living testimonies, known to all, should at once have dis- pelled the illusion which many writers, and some of' them able ones, have indulged in ; that temperature, food, clothing, and other secondary influences, were the chief causes of that extraordinary variation in the aspect of the human species which the different nations of the earth exhibit, and which, so long as each race is pre- served pure, is unchanging and unchangeable.Upon such a subject the modest and ingenuous mind may in- dulge conjecture ; but when we attempt to penetrate the darkness of primitive ages, and pretend to trace the first causes of such things, we wander in regions from which human knowledge is excluded.He alone, that great First Cause, " by whom all things were made that are made," is alone master of this impenetrable secret.(3.) Let us now look to the animal world.Here we may see thousands of beings, endowed with powers of locomotion which have been utterly denied to man.The swallow, darting like an arrow through the air at the rate of sixty miles an hour, seems to mock the comparatively snail-like pace of our swiftest vessels ; the curlew runs rapidly on the ground, mounts on the breaking surge, or swiftly flies from one continent to another, thus traversing, with perfect ease, three ele- ments,the earth, the air, and the sea.Thousands, in short, of little tiny birds perform journies, every spring and autumn, any one of which, to us, would be the occupation of a year.Now the theoretical conclusion we should make, on considering these facts, would be, that animals, so peculiarly gifted with the powers of locomotion, would use it to wander in every clime, that they would spread their races in every region of the earth where food could be procured, or where they could enjoy a fit temperature.'Contradictory, therefore, as these facts, at first sight, may appear to be to the Mosaic account of the deluge.HYPOTHESIS ON ANIMAL GEOGBAPHT.5 the results furnished by zoological science will, never- theless, on a closer view, rather tend to explain and illustrate the sacred records.(6.)The hypothesis of Dr. Prichard relative to this important question, and in refutation of the above opinion, is marked by great intelligence." It seems difficult to maintain, with Linnoeus, that all the tribes of land animals now existing descended from a stock that was preserved in Noah's ark, because, in that case, they must all have been congregated in one spot ; a supposition which can hardly be reconciled with the results of zoological researches.But, perhaps, there is no necessity of assuming any such position.It is nowhere asserted in the Mosaic history ; and who can prove that the various nations of animals which have the centre of their abode, and seem, to have had the origin of their existence, in distant regions, as Austraha and South America, were not created since the era of that deluge, which the human race, and the species of animals that were their companions, survived ?This, indeed, seems to be the conclusion which facts, every day discovered, dispose us more and more to adopt."*" The deluge recorded in Genesis," continues our author, " was, perhaps, not universal, in the strict sense of the word, as it is now unaerstood.The whole earth, the kol aerets, which is said to have been submerged, might be only all the oly.avu.h-t), or habitable world ; it might only extend to the utmost limits of the human race ; and other regions, with their peculiar organised creations, might be supposed to have escaped ; and this hypothesis might, perhaps, be maintained without doing any violence to the sacred text, of which every expression has received a divine sanction."But this supposition, as our author very candidly admits, " is direcdy opposed to geological phenomena ; which, with a variety of considerations, render it more probable that this deluge was strictly universal.It is incontestable * Hilt of Uankind, vol.I p. 81.B 3 O ON THE GEOGRAPHY OF ANIMALS.that ihe fossil remains of animals, every where dis- coverable, chiefly belong to races different from t!iose wliich now exist ; these were probably exterminated in the great catastrophe.Mankind escaped by the means recorded in the sacred, and in many profane, histories ; and with them were saved the stock of animals peculiar to the region in which, before the flood, they had their dwelling, and of which they, and most of the early do- mesticated animals, are in all probability the native inhabitants.After the deluge, when new regions emerged from the ocean, it is probable they were supplied with organised inhabitants suited to the soil and climate of each district.Among these new races, man, and the tribes which had survived with him, and which were his companions, spread themselves in a later time.The scripture liistory may thus be reconciled with the facts established by zoological research."Some per- sons will object to this hypothesis that it assumes po- sitions not laid down in the sacred narrative, such as a partial creation subsequent to the deluge.ON THE GEOGRAPHY OF ANIMALS.eighteen instances out of twenty^instantly recognise the butterflies of Africa from those of America? or what ornithologist would now confound the flycatchers or the warblers of the Old with those of the New World ?These are all indications of those primary and comprehensive divisions, which both Fabricius and Latreille have lost sight of from a wish of attaining precision, and of entering upon details : they have, consequently, produced theories substantially built upon climate and temperature.M. Latreille, indeed, would seem to be fully aware of the slender foundation of all such speculations, since he remarks, with great truth, that as places where the temperature is the same, have different animals, it is impossible, in the actual state of our knowledge, to fix these distinctions of climates upon a solid basis.This opinion, it appears, is entertained both by M. Humboldt and Mr. M'Leay : and Mr. KirL^joins in believing, '"that the real insect climates, or those in which certain groups or species appear, may be regarded as fixed by the will of the Creator, rather than as regulated by isothermal lines."* It cannot for a moment be supposed, that the geographic distribution of insects is regulated by other laws than those which affect animals in general ; although each may possess some few pecu- liarities in their minor details : the above objections, therefore, although more especially urged against the two entomological theories we have here noticed, are no less applicable to all others, intending to trace the phenomena of animal geography to temperature; and to fix their natural provinces or climates by degrees of longitude or latitude.(17.)There yet remains to be noticed another hypothesis, more recently proposed, not, indeed, by a na- turalist, but by one whose physiological researches are of the highest value, and whose opinions, therefore, merit every attention.Dr. Prichard is the first who • Int to Entom.voi iv.p. 484 DR. pbichabd's theory.13 attempted a more natural theory of animal distribution.This intelligent writer has looked more to the configuration of the earth, and to the natural connection or separation of its parts by intervening islands or oceans, than to absolute limits of longitude or latitude.Accordingly, from this very circumstance, his zoological divisions are formed with much greater attention to nature than any of his predecessors.The following are the primary divisions he has proposed: -1. the arctic regions of the New and the Old World ; 2. the temperate ; 3. the equatorial or tropical ; 4. the Indian islands ; 5. the islands of New Guinea, New Britain, and New Ireland, and those more remote in the Pacific Ocean ; 6. Australia proper ; and, lastly, the southern extremities of America and Africa.*(18.)The objections that maybe stated against these divisions chiefly arise from the author not having kept in view th

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