. TEMPERATE FAUNAS.—To the glacial zone, which encloses a single fauna, succeeds the temperate zone, included between the isothermes (or lines of equal mean tempera ture) of 32° and 74°, characterized by its pine-forests, its maples, its walnuts, and its fruit-trees, and inhabited by the terrestrial bear, the wolf, the fox, the weasel, the mar ten, the otter, the lynx, the horse and ass, the bear, numerous genera and species of deer, goats, sheep, oxen, hares. squirrels, rats, etc.; and southwards by a few represen tatives of the tropical zone. Considering the whole range of the temperate zone from east to west, Agassiz divides it, in accordance with the prevailing physical features, into —1st, the Asiatic realm, embracing Mantchuria, Japan, China, Mongolia, and passing through Turkestan into, 2d, the EAropean realm, which includes Iran, Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Northern Arabia' and J3arbary, as well as Europe7properly so called; the western parts of Asia and the northern parts of Africa being intimately connected by their geological structure with the southern part of Europe; and 3d, the .r.VOrth American realm, which extends as far s. as the table-land of Mexico.
The temperate zone is not characterized, like the arctic, by one and the same same fauna. Not only are the animals different in the eastern and western hemispheres, but there are differences in the various regions of the same hemisphere: as we before remarked, the species resemble, but are not identical with one another. Thus, in Europe, we have the brown bear; in North America, the black bear; and in Asia, the bear of Tibet; the common stag or red deer of Europe is represented in North America by the Canadian stag or wapiti and the American deer, and in eastern Asia by the musk deer; the North American buffalo is represented in Europe by the wild aurochs of Lithu ania, and in Mongolia by the yak; and numerous other examples might readily be given.
The marked chang, s of temperature between the different seasons occasion migra tions of animals more in this zone than any other, and this point must not be over looked by the naturalist in determining the fauna of a locality within it. Many of the birds of northern Europe and America, in their instinctive search for a warmer winter climate, proceed as far southward as the shores of the Mediterranean and of the gulf of Mexico. See MIGRATIONS OF ANIMALS.
Amongq the most characteristic of the animals of the Asiatic realm, we may men-. tion the bear of Tibet, the musk-deer, the tzeiran (Antilope gutturosa), the Mongolian goat, the argali, the yak, the Bactrian or double-hunched camel, the wild horse, the wild. ass, and other equine species, the dtschigetai (equus hemionus). The nations of men inhabiting these realms all belong to the so-called Mongolian race.
That the European is a distinct zoological realm, seems to be established, says Agas siz, "by the range of its mammalia, and by the limits of the migrations of its birds, as. well as by the physical features of its whole extent. Thus we find its deer or stag, its bear, its hare, its squirrel, its wolf and wild cat, its fox and jackal, its otter, its Weasel and marten, its badger, its bear, its mole, its hedgehogs, its bats, etc. Like the eastern realm, the European world may be subdivided into a number of distinct faunas, char acterized each by a variety of peculiar animals. In western Asia, we find, for instance,
the common camel instead of the Bactrian; whilst Mount Sinai, Mounts Taurus and Cau caSus have goats and wild sheep which differ as much from those of Asia as from thos6• of Greece, the Alps, the Atlas, or of Egypt." There is no reason for our referring, as many writers have done, our chief domesticated animals to an Asiatic origin. A wild horse, different in species from the Asiatic breeds, once inhabited Spain and Germany, and a wild bull existed over the whole range of central Europe. The domesticated cat, whether we trace it to fells maniculata of Egypt or to fells rates (the wild cat) of central Europe, belongs to this realm; and whatever theory be adopted regarding the origin of the dog, the European realm forms its natural range. The merino sheep is still repre sented in the wild state by the moufion of Sardinia, and formerly ranged over all the mountains in Spain. The hog is descended from the common boar, still found wild over most of the temperate zone of the old world. Ducks, geese, and pigeons have their wild representatives in Europe. The common fowl and the turkey are, on the• other hand, not indigenous, the former being of e. Asiatic, and the latter of American origin. The reader will observe that the European zoological realm is circumscribed within exactly the same limits as the so-called white race of man.
The American realm contains many animals not found in Europe or Asia, amongst which we may mention the opossum; several species of insectivore, as, for example, the shrew-mole (scalops aguaticus) and the star-nosed mole (condylura crkitata), several spe cies of rodents (especially the musk-rat), the Canadian elk, etc., in the northern por tion; and the prairie-wolf, the fox-squirrel, etc., in the southern portion of the fauna. Amongst other types characteristic of this zone must be reckoned the snapping-turtle• among the tortoises; the menobranchus and menopoma among the salamanders; and the rattlesnake among the serpents; and the lepidosteus and the amia, important representa tives of two almost extinct families, among the fishes.
The faunas of the southern temperate region differ from one another more than those of the corresponding northern region. "Each of the three continental peninsulas jut ting out southerly into the ocean, represents, in some sense, a separate world. The ani mals of South America beyond the tropic of Capricorn are in all respects different from those at the southern extremity of Africa. The hyenas, wild boars, and rhinoceroses of the cape of Good Hope have no analogies on the American continent; and the differ ence is equally great between the birds, reptiles, fishes, insects, and molluscs. New, Holland, with its marsupial mammals, with which are associated insects and molluscs no less singular, furnishes a fauna still more peculiar, and which has no similarity to those of any of the adjacent countries. In the seas of that continent, we find the curi ous shark, with paved teeth and spines on the back (cestracion Phillippil), the only living representative of a family so numerous in former zoological ages."