*The platypus and echidna have been accidentally misnumbered; their

proper situation being with the order marsupiata.

REPTILES.

CHAPTER VIII.

GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMALS.

Ye blessed creatures, I have heard the call,

Ye to each other make; I see

The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,

My head, too, hath its coronal,

The fulness of your bliss I feel-I feel it all.

WORDSWORTH.

MULTIFARIOUS as are the known vegetable productions of the earth, its animated inhabitants are greatly more numerous; almost every portion of the globe teeming with living creatures.

Nor is the stream

Of purest crystal, nor the lucid air,

Though one transparent vacancy it seem,
Void of the unseen people.

The geographical distribution of animals, like that of plants, appears to depend partly on temperature and climate, and partly on local causes. Animals, also, like plants, have their natural stations and habitations, though these are not always capable of being so rigorously determined as those of the latter. Some, however, are remarkably local. Thus, the mydaus meliceps, or badger-headed mydaus, an animal intermediate in character between the badger and polecat, and which is an inhabitant of Java, "is confined exclusively to those mountains in that island, which have an elevation of more than 7,000 feet above the level of the sea; and on these it occurs with the same regularity as many plants."

Noxious as are some species of animals to us, and insignificant as many of the inferior tribes may appear, they all act their appointed part in the economy of nature, fulfilling the offices assigned them by the Creator. Man is apt to regard good and evil so entirely as it has reference to himself, and is subservient to his own convenience, that he not un

frequently overlooks the general amount of happiness which the beneficent Author of Nature appears to have had in view in the creation of animated beings. He too much considers the world as made for him, and for him alone; and accordingly too often regards all things that are not conducive to his pleasure or benefit, either as useless or noxious. "We complain," says Paley, "of what appears to us the exorbitant number of some troublesome insects; not reflecting that large portions of nature would be left void without it. What we term blights, are oftentimes legions of animated beings, claiming their portion of the bounty of nature."

In the animal, as well as in the vegetable kingdom, the largest proportion of species occurs in the warm regions of the globe, and a gradual decrease in the number both of genera and species, is observable as we recede from intertro pical countries. This decrease is very striking in the radi ated animals, the greater number of which are inhabitants of the ocean. In cold latitudes, the cellariæ, and sertullariæ, with a few sponges, alcyonia, and asteriæ, are alone to be met with. When we arrive at the forty-fourth or fortyfifth degree of north latitude, their number increases, and gorgoniæ, sponges with loose tissues, and millipores, appear in profusion. A little further, and the coral reddens the depths of the ocean with its brilliant branches; Sicily, in particular, having been long famed for its fisheries of the true red coral. This is soon followed by the large madrepores. It is not, however, until we approach the thirty-fourth parallel of latitude that the radiated animals become developed to any great degree in the northern hemisphere; and it is chiefly within the tropics, that these minute animals, scarcely visible to the naked eye, perform the important offices allotted them in the field of nature; constructing those vast reefs, which either form additions to already existing land, or constitute new islands.

The flustræ, however, do not appear to be restricted by climate, but abound in every sea, occurring in profusion on the sea-shores, being usually found attached to the fuci