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

CHAPTER IV.ON ZOOLOGICAL REGIONS.To the older school of Naturalists the native country of an animalwas of little importance, except in as far as climates differed.Animals were supposed to be specially adapted to live in certainzones or under certain physical conditions, and it was hardlyrecognised that apart from these conditions there was anyinfluence in locality which could materially affect them. Itwas believed that, whilethe animals of tropical, temperate, andarctic climates, essentially differed ; those of the tropics wereessentially alike all over the world. A group of animals wassaid to inhabit the "Indies;" and important differences ofstructure were often overlooked from the idea, that creaturesequally adapted to live in hot countries and with certaingeneral resemblances, would naturally be related to each other.Thus the Toucans and Hornbills, the Humming- Birds and Sun-Birds, and even the Tapirs and the Elephants, came to bepopularly associated as slightly modified varieties of tropicalforms of life; while to naturalists, who were acquainted withthe essential differences of structure, it was a never-failingsource of surprise, that under climates and conditions soapparently identical, such strangely divergent forms shouldbe produced.To the modern naturalist, on the other hand, the nativecountry (or " habitat " as it is technically termed) of an animal