*The platypus and echidna have been accidentally misnumbered; their proper situation being with the order marsupiata. CHAPTER VIII. GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMALS. Ye blessed creatures, I have heard the call, The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee; My head, too, hath its coronal, The fulness of your bliss I feel-I feel it all. WORDSWOR MULTIFARIOUS as are the known vegetable producti the earth, its animated inhabitants are greatly more rous; almost every portion of the globe teeming with creatures. Nor is the stream Of purest crystal, nor the lucid air, Though one transparent vacancy it seem, The geographical distribution of animals, like the plants, appears to depend partly on temperature and clin and partly on local causes. Animals, also, like plants, their natural stations and habitations, though these are always capable of being so rigorously determined as thos the latter. Some, however, are remarkably local. TI the mydaus meliceps, or badger-headed mydaus, an ani intermediate in character between the badger and polecat, which is an inhabitant of Java, "is confined exclusively those mountains in that island, which have an elevation more than 7,000 feet above the level of the sea; and on the it occurs with the same regularity as many plants." Noxious as are some species of animals to and insigni cant as many of the inferior tribes may appear, they all a their appointed part in the economy of nature, fulfilling th offices assigned them by the Creator. good and evil so entirely as it has us, Man is apt to regar reference to himself and is subservient to his own convenience, that he not un |