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It would seem, therefore, to be very probable that, under the climatal conditions of part of the pleistocene period, the valley of the Obi played the same part in relation to the Ponto-Aralian sea, as that of the Kishon may have done to the great mere of the Jordan valley; and that the outflow formed the channel by which the well-known Arctic elements of the fauna of the Caspian entered it.

We are now beginning to see the end of the North American fauna; and if we do not move promptly, it will become a matter of history and of museums. The bison is on the danger line; if it survives the fatal effects of its natural sluggishness when abundantly fed, it still runs the more insidious but equally great danger of inbreeding, like the wild ox of Europe.

When the time comes we will discover the reason for these differences in the rations served. The Mantis-killing Tachytes wears a red scarf, like her kinswoman, Panzer's Tachytes. This species may well be new to our fauna.

The shells and bones now lying at the bottoms of lakes and estuaries in these several regions, have certainly not that similarity which is usually looked for in those of contemporaneous strata; and the recent forms exhumed in any one of these regions would very untruly represent the present Flora and Fauna of the Earth.

The piraracu, for instance, is found everywhere from Peru to Para; and so are a few other species more or less extensively distributed over what may be considered distinct ichthyological fauna. But these wide-spread species are not migratory.

Twelve thousands different kinds of animals are enumerated in its fauna, 28,000 plants in its flora, and the statistical survey prepared by the government fills 128 volumes of the size of our census reports. One hundred and eighteen distinct languages are spoken in various parts of India and fifty-nine of these languages are spoken by more than 100,000 people each.

The loess is generally devoid of fossils, although in many places they are abundant, consisting of land-shells, all of living species, and comprising no small part of the entire molluscous fauna now inhabiting the same region.

As the localization of marine plants and animals, is in a considerable degree determined by the natures of the rocks and their detritus, it follows that each part of this coast will have its more or less distinct Flora and Fauna. What now must result from the action of the waves in the course of a geologic epoch?

Ergimo landed to make arrangements for the chase, to witness which was the principal object of this deviation from what would otherwise have been our most convenient course. Not only would it be possible to take part in the pursuit of the wild fauna of the continent, but I also hoped to share in a novel sport, not unlike a whale-hunt in Baffin's Bay.

But for some minutes I involuntarily confounded the genera, taking animals for plants; and who would not have been mistaken? The fauna and the flora are too closely allied in this submarine world. These plants are self-propagated, and the principle of their existence is in the water, which upholds and nourishes them.