oological
divisions--The range of British Mammals as indicating a Zoological
Region--Range of East Asian and North African Mammals--The Range of
British Birds--Range of East Asian Birds--The limits of the Palaearctic
Region--Characteristic features of the Palaearctic Region--Definition
and characteristic groups of the Ethiopian Region--Of the Oriental
Region--Of the Australian Region--Of the Nearctic Region--Of the
Neotropical Region--Comparison of Zoological Regions with the
Geographical Divisions of the Globe.

Having now obtained some notion of how animals are dispersed over the
earth's surface, whether as single species or as collected in those groups
termed genera, families, and orders, it will be well, before proceeding
further, to understand something of the classification of the facts we have
been considering, and some of the simpler conclusions these facts lead to.

We have hitherto described the distribution of species and groups of
animals by means of the great geographical divisions of the globe in common
use; but it will have been observed that in hardly any case do these define
the limits of anything beyond species, and very seldom, or perhaps never,
even those accurately. Thus the term "Europe" will not give, with any
approach to accuracy, the range of any one genus of mammals or birds, and
{32} perhaps not that of half-a-dozen species. Either they range into
Siberia, or Asia Minor, or Palestine, or North Africa; and this seems to be
always the case when their area of distribution occupies a large portion of
Europe. There are, indeed, a few species limited to Central or Western or
Southern Europe, and these are almost the only cases in which we can use
the word for zoological purposes without having to add to it some portion
of another continent. Still less useful is the term Asia for this purpose,
since there is probably no single animal or group confined to Asia which is
not also more or less nearly confined to the tropical or the temperate
portion of it. The only exception is perhaps the tiger, which may really be
called an Asiatic animal, as it occupies nearly two-thirds of the
continent; but this is an unique example, while the cases in which Asiatic
animals and groups are strictly limited to a portion of Asia, or extend
also into Europe or into Africa or to the Malay Islands, are exceedingly
numerous. So, in Africa, very few groups of animals range over the whole of
i