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But if he had written a book on England, founded on his impressions of the Zoo, it might have been a little disproportionate and even misleading in its version of the flora and fauna of that country. He might imagine that lions and leopards were commoner than they are in our hedgerows and country lanes, or that the head and neck of a giraffe was as native to our landscapes as a village spire.
Crustaceans and insects appeared as early as Silurian times. The idea of successive "kingdoms" or "periods," each of which was complete in its actual fauna upon earth before the next was fully ushered in, can no longer be defended.
Just so long as there remains in this land of ours a fauna of game birds, and the gunners of one-half the states are allowed to dictate the laws for the slaughter of it, just so long will our present protection remain utterly absurd and criminally inadequate.
And should such an hypothesis eventually be proved to be true, in the only way in which it can be demonstrated, viz. by observation and experiment upon the existing forms of life, the conclusion will inevitably present itself, that the Palaeozoic Mesozoic, and Cainozoic faunae and florae, taken together, bear somewhat the same proportion to the whole series of living beings which have occupied this globe, as the existing fauna and flora do to them.
The relation of some of the quaint distinguishing traits of the Island fauna must be left until the historian imagines that he has established a reputation for subduing, rather than heightening, the tone of his facts. This introduction has not a particular but a wide bearing. Chief among the birds of prey are the osprey, the white-headed sea-eagle, and the white-bellied sea-eagle.
Indeed, Australia, as regards its fauna, may be considered as a museum, with the animals of old times alive instead of in skeleton form. The kangaroo is always taken as a type of Australian animal life. The kangaroo, like practically all Australian animals, is a marsupial, carrying its young about in a pouch after their birth until they reach maturity.
On the mountains the climate, flora, and fauna were all those of the north, not of the adjacent southern lowlands. The ruffed grouse, red squirrel, snow bird, various Canadian warblers, and a peculiar species of boreal field-mouse, the evotomys, are all found as far south as the Great Smokies.
One of these days you will make him a correspondent of the Institute, unless he kills himself with work too early, or is led away by his tendency to generalization. Then there is Gould, author of the malacologic fauna of Massachusetts, and who is now working up the mollusks of the Wilkes Expedition. De Kay and Lea, whose works have long been known, are rather specialists, I should say.
It will be imagined, perhaps, that we shall find out where we are by the indication of the flora and fauna. A lady and gentleman before the dawn of day have been climbing up an arid road in the direction of a dark ridge. Observe, again, the ingenious vagueness of the description: an 'arid road' which may mean Siberia, and a 'dark ridge' which may mean the Himalayas.
On the horns of red-deer, Owen, 'British Fossil Mammals, 1846, p. 478; Richardson on the horns of the reindeer, 'Fauna Bor. Americana, 1829, p. 240. I am indebted to Prof. Hon. But this author overlooks the pitched battles between rival males. As I felt much perplexed about the use or advantage of the branches, I applied to Mr.
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