S K E T C H
OF THE
NATURAL PROVINCES OF THE ANIMAL WORLD AND THEIR RELATION
TO THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF MAN.
BY LOUIS AGAS S IZ.
Messrs. N ott and Gliddon.
Dear Sirs:— I n compliance with your request that I should furnish you with certain
scientific facts respecting the Natural History of Man, to which you are now devoting particularly
your attention, I transmit to you some general remarks upon the natural relations
of the human family and the organic world surrounding it; in the hope that it may call
the attention of naturalists to the dose connection there is between the geographical distribution
of animals and the natural boundaries of the different races of man — a fact which must be
explained by any theory of the origin of life which claims tS cover the whole of this difficult
problem. I do not pretend to present such a theory now, but would simply illustrate
the facts as they are, to lay the foundation of a more extensive work to be'published at
some future time. Nor is it my intention to characterize here all the zoological provinces
recognized by naturalists, but only those the animals of which are known with sufficient
accuracy to throw light upon the subject under consideration. Of the marine animals I
shall therefore take no notice, except so far as they bear a special relation to the habits
of uncivilized races or to the commercial enterprise of the world. The views illustrated
m the following pages have been expressed for the first time by me iff a paper, published
m French, in the Revue Suisse for 1845.
Very truly, yours,
Cambridge, Mass., Dec. 19th, 1853. Ls. A gassiz.
T h e r e is one. feature in the physical history of mankind which has
been entirely neglected by those who have studied this subject, viz.,
the natural relations between the different types of man and the
animals and plants inhabiting the same regions. The sketch here
presented is intended to supply this deficiency, as far as it is possible
m a mere outline delineation, and to show that the boundaries, within
which the different natural combinations of animals are known to be
circumscribed upon the surface of our earth, coincide with the natural
range of distinct types of man. Such natural combinations of animals
circumscribed within definite boundaries are called faunse, whatever
(Iviii)
be their home — land, sea, or river. Among the animals which compose
the fauna of a countiy, we find types belonging exclusively
there, and not occurring elsewhere; such are, for example, the orni-
thorhynchus of Hew Holland, the sloths of America, the hippopotamus
of Africa, and the walruses of the arctics: others, which have
only a small number of representatives beyond the fauna which they
specially characterize, as, for instance, the marsupials of Hew Holland,
of which America has a few species, such as the opossum; and*
again others which have a wider range, such as the hears, of which
there are distinct species in Europe, Asia, or America, or the mice
and bats, which are to he found all over the world, except in the
arctics., That fauna will, therefore, he most easily characterized
which possesses the largest number of distinct types, proper to itself,
and of which the other animals have little analogy with those of
neighboring regions, as, for example, the fauna of Hew Holland.
The inhabitants of fresh waterB furnish also excellent characters
for the circumscription of faunse. The fishes, and other fluviatile
animals from the larger hydrographic basins, differ no less from each
other than the mammalia, the birds, the reptiles, and the insects of
the countries which these rivers water, nevertheless, some authors
have attempted to separate the fresh water animals from those of the
land and sea, and to establish distinct divisions for them, under the
name of fluviatile faunse. But the inhabitants of the rivers and
lakes are too intimately connected with those of their shores to allow
of a rigorous distinction of this kind. Rivers never establish a separation
between terrestrial faunse. For the same reason, the faunse of
the inland seas cannot be completely isolated from the terrestrial
ones, and we shall see hereafter that the animals of southern Europe
are not bound by the Mediterranean, but are found on the southern
shore of that sea, as far as the Atlas. We shall, therefore, distinguish
our zoological regions according to the combination of species
which they enclose, rather than according to the element in which
we find them.
If the grand divisions of the animal kingdom are primordial and
independent of climate, this is not the case with regard to the ultimate
local circumscription of species: these are, on the contrary,
intimately connected with the conditions of temperature, soil, and
vegetation. A remarkable instance of this distribution of animals
with reference to climate may be observed in the arctic fauna, which
contains a great number of species common to the three continents
converging towards the Horth Pole, and which presents a striking
uniformity, when compared with the diversity of the temperate and
tropical faunse of those same continents.