The geographical distribution of animals, with a study of the relations ...

252 ZOOLOGICAL GEOGRAPHY. [part hi.different kind of country ; being almost wholly dense forestswhere not cleared by man, and having the hot moist uniformclimate, and perennial luxuriance of vegetation, which characterisethe great equatorial belt of forest all round the globe.Thisforest country extends to an unknown distance inland, but it wasfound, with its features well marked, by Dr. Schweinfurth directlyhe crossed the south-western watershed of the Nile ; and far tothe south we find itagain unmistakably indicated, in the excessivelymoist forest country about the head waters of the Congo,where the heroic Livingstone met his death. In this forestdistrict many of the more remarkable African types are alonefound, and its productions occasionally present us with curioussimilarities to those of the far removed South American orMalayan forests. This is our second or West African subregion.Extra-tropical South Africa possesses features of its own, quitedistinct from those of both the preceding regions (although it hasalso much in common with the first). Its vegetation is knownto be one of the richest,most peculiar, and most remarkable onthe globe ; and in its zoology it has a speciality, similar in kindbut less in degree, which renders it both natural and convenientto separate it as our third, or South African sub-region. Itslimits are not very clearly ascertained, but it is probably boundedby the Kalahari desert on the north-west, and by the LimpopoValley, or the mountain range beyond, on the north-east, althoughsome of its peculiar forms extend to Mozambique. Thereremains the great Island of Madagascar, one of the most isolatedand most interesting on the globe, asregards its animal productions;and to this must be added, the smaller islands of Bourbon,Mauritius and Rodriguez, the Seychelles and the Comoro Islands,forming together the Mascarene Islands,—the whole constitutingour fourth sub-region.Zoological Characteristics of theEthiopian Region.—We havenow to consider briefly, what are the peculiarities and characteristicsof the Ethiopian Region asit its distinctive features and broadly separate itprimary zoological regions.a whole,—those which givefrom the other