The geographical and geological distribution of animals / Angelo Heilprin.

  • Angelo Heilprin
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The geographical and geological distribution of animals / Angelo Heilprin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    84/466 (page 58)
    south, the Neotropical; and the same can probably be said of the extremity of the peninsula of Florida. With these limitations the Holarctic in the Western Hemisphere embraces the whole of the United States, and all the region stretching thence northward towards and into the Arctic Sea. In the Eastern Hemisphere the southern boundary may in a general way be said to be the moun- tain complex which, as the Pyrenees, Alps, Balkans, and Caucasus, traverses the south of Europe from the Bay of Biscay to the Cas- pian, the northern line of Persia and Afghanistan, the Hima- laya Mountains, and the Nanling range in China, which forms the southern water-shed to the Yangtse-Kiang. These various boun- daries are principally of a physical nature, and of such a char- acter as to be insurmountable to most animals. No other region can compare with the Holarctic in the mani- fold variety of its physical characteristics. Every form of terres- trial configuration, or condition of soil or climate, that may be rep- resented in any other region, is also represented here, and on an imposing scale. From the ice-bound fields of the far north to the burning desert wastes of Turkestan on the south, and from the dee]) forest-grown lowlands to mountain summits soaring thou- sands of feet above the level of perpetual snow, we pass through all those various gradations of climate which respectively charac- terise the Frigid, Temperate, and Torrid zones. Densely covered forest tracts, supporting, as in the north, a sombre growth of pine and other coniferous trees, or, as in the south, a vegetation of almost tropical luxuriance, alternate with broadly open grass or pasture lands (tundras of Siberia, American prairies and plains), which in some cases support over enormous areas only a very scanty vegetation, and in others display a profuse variety of vegetable productions. It is in this region that, in addition to a most boun- tiful development of desert tracts, we meet with the most elevated table-land (the Central-Asian), and, at the same time, with the greatest expanse of lowland on the surface of the globe, the great plain of Siberia and Northeastern Europe. For convenience of treatment, and to facilitate comparison with other zoogeographical publications, the Old and New World divi- sions of the Holarctic region will be considered separately. The Old World or Eurasiatic Division (Palaearctic region [in part] of most authors).—The southern boundaries of this region