XX, country rise, under the tropics, and the cold temperature of BOOK that elevation, present to the inhabitants of the torrid zone, an extremely singular prospect. Besides the groups of palm and banana trees, they see also around them the vegetable forms, which appear to belong only to the regions of the north. Cypresses, firs, and oaks, barberries and alder trees nearly resembling ours, cover the mountainous districts of the south of Mexico as well as the chain of the Andes under the equator. perate The southern temperate zone should now terminate the The temphytographical description of the globe, could we venture southern to assert, that, with reference to vegetation, such a zone does zone. exist. It appears that the three extremities of America, of Africa, and of New Holland, included in this zone, contain only vegetable colonies, which, taking their origin from the torrid zone of each of these`regions, have spread themselves towards the south. It is therefore probable that the vegetation of these three continental extremities, even were it better known than it is at present, would present to us a few detached local scenes rather than any general picture. BOOK XXI. Continuation of the Theory of Geography. Of the Earth, considered as the residence of Organic Beings. BOOK XXI. General views. SECTION II. OF THE GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMALS. THE unknown power which first put in motion the springs of animal life, and which continues to keep them in play, was certainly not confiued to one particular region of the globe. Matter, every where, must have acquired animation at the sound of the Creator's voice; the elementary particles, while attracting each other, and ranging themselves in fibres, muscles, and bones, must have every where preSpontane sented the spectacle of that spontaneous generation, which is ous gene probably, at all times, ushering into existence millions of aquatic and other animalcules, some of them so minute as appear to the most powerful microscope merely as a small point or globe, destitute of organs.* It is difficult to conceive that there exists in this original tendency of matter towards organization, differences founded upon the geographical situation of places. ration. Zoophytes. Zoophytes are so imperfectly known, and so difficult to class, that we cannot say whether each maritime region possesses any species peculiar to itself. Coral, externally an animal and internally a rock, madrepores, and millepores, which, on the contrary, have a stony covering, seem to exist only in the regions adjoining to the tropics, in the seas There are three or first, that part of Seas of co- warmed by the rays of a vertical sun. four great seas of coral upon the globe: ral. Compare Cuvier, Tableau Elémentaire des Animaux. p. 663. XXI. the great ocean where flat islands appear, such as those BOOK called the Friendly Islands, New Caledonia, the Solomon Isles, or Isles of Danger, and in general those tracts of sea lying between the different parts of the Oceanic division of the world. It is there that the mariner is in continual danger of striking against some rock of coral, shooting perpendicularly up from an immense depth. The second region extends from the coast of Malabar to that of Madagascar and Zanguebar. Our Mediterranean forms the third region; but the valuable coral which it furnishes, and which is in great request from Africa to Japan, essentially differs from the coarse substances of which the islands in the southern sea are composed. The Gulfs of Arabia and of Persia, if we credit the ancients, are peopled with subterraneous forests of Zoophytes.* The sea of the Antilles, and the Gulf of Mexico, ought to contain a great many madrepores. But who is sufficiently acquainted with the different holothurae, starstones, medusae, and other fugitive embryos of aquatic beings, to assign to them their native region? The indefatigable voyagers, Peron and Lesueur, who so carefully observed the changeable and delicate forms of the zoophytes,† found the abode of the species pyrosoma confined to one particular region of the Atlantic Ocean; and they imagine that each description of zoophyte has its place of residence determined by the temperature necessary to support its existence. The ocean also contains monsters, which it is dangerous Polypi. to observe too near. When shall we come to distinguish the different kinds of polypi or hydras, with exactness sufficient to determine the boundaries of the tracts which they respectively occupy at the bottom of the ocean? We think it probable that the size of the polypi varies with the depth of the seas where they live. If we certainly know that the Straits of Messina, and the English Channel, contain some which have arms ten feet long, why *Plin. Hist. Nat. xiii. 25. + Voyages aux Terres Australes, i. 492. et l'Atlas, pl. xxix.-xxxi. XXI. BOOK should we treat as fabulous those very circumstantial accounts, both of the ancients* and the moderns,† which speak of polypi taken in the Mediterranean, in the Atlantic, and in the Indian seas, whose arus, when accurately measured, Would it were found to be from 30 to 40 feet in length! not be consistent with the rules of sound criticism, to suspend our judgment respecting the monstrous krakenst of Norway, said to be an half a league in length, the existence of which several respectables naturalists have conceived to be established by recent observations? shells. Zoophytes exhibit the first actings of creative power; they may be considered as confused masses of beings, animated with an incipient principle of life, but not yet existing Molluscae separately. The molluscae, whether naked or testaceous, have acquired a real individual existence. Accordingly their different species belong to different countries: the shells of Timor are met with upon the coasts of New Holland only as far as to the south-west point; and the shells of Van Dieman's land, such as the Haliotis gigantea and the Phasianellus, diminish in size as they follow the coasts of New Holland, to king George's Straits, and entirely disappear beyond them. The pinna marina, whose glossy filaments outshine silk, thrives only in the Indian seas, and in the Mediterranean. The pearl oyster attains perfection no But the natural arwhere except in the equatoreal seas. rangement is often subverted; the ships to which the shells adhere, transport them from the one pole to the other. It is in this way that the waters of Holland have been peopled by that teredo navalis which is so destructive to vessels.¶ The calcareous secretion of the Zoophytes is rock or stone the very moment that the animal dies. The calcare *Plin. ix. 30. Aelian Hist. Nat. xiii. 6. † Aldrovand, de Molluscis, Part vii. c. 2. Johnston, de Exanguib. Aquat. ib. ì. tit. 2. c. 1. Swediaur, Journal de Physique, 1784, vol. ii. p. 284. $97. See the article Norway, in this work. Bosc. Hist. Nat. des Vers, i. p. 36. Montfort, Histoire des Mollusques, ii. 71, 153, 218. Pennant, British Zoology, iv. tab. 23. fig. 44. Péron et Lesueur, Annales du Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle, xv. Sellii, Nat. Hist. teredin Utrecht, 1733. XXI. ous secretion of testaceous molluscæ or shells, forms rock BOOK only when decomposing. The structure of corals and madrepores is grained, that of shells is lamellated or stratified. These animals, from their being destitute of sensibility, seem closely allied to the mineral kingdom. cal distri We now advance to another order, which may be viewed as belonging to the vegetable kingdom,-the order of insects, in which worms occupy the bottom of the scale. Insects Geographi which, as they pass through the states of larva and chrysa-bution of lis, remind us of the successive development of roots, stalks, insects. and flowers; insects, which may be termed winged and animated flowers, indicate already, in their complicated organization, some obscure traces of sensibility, although irritability still predominates. It is in the midst of the most exuberant vegetation—it is in the torrid zone—that the strongest and the most splendid insects are to be seen; such as the butterflies of Africa, of the East Indies, and of America, whose brilliant colours rival the lustre of metals. There also, and particularly in South America, the forests, peopled by millions of glow-worms, present to the eye of the benighted traveller the scene of an immense conflagration. The termés of Africa, named also the White Ant, builds solid hillocks; and the spider of Guyana attacks even birds with success. The limulus gigas, the largest of all aquatic insects, is also an inhabitant of the equator, as its vulgar name, the Crab of the Moluccas, indicates. Certain kinds, such as gnats, bees, and flies, appear to be equally distributed over the whole of the globe. The short polar summer hatches a multitude as innumerable as the heats of the torrid zone: the musquito, which torments the traveller on the banks of the Oronooko, resembles that which buzzes in Lapland. Wherever man has not drained Countries the marshes, and cleared the forests, insects reign with re- rendered sistless sway. History has recorded several examples of able by intowns and countries rendered uninhabitable by the multi-sects. tude of bees, wasps, or gnats. Armies and whole tribes Cuvier, Tableau Elémentaire, 452. Herod. v. 10. Plin. viii. 29-58. Elian, xvii. 35. Pausan, in Achaicis. Compare, Bochart, Hierozoicon, l. iv. c. 13. vol. ii. p. 539, sqq. uninhabit |