e Nearctic region, with the addition of the
Antilles or West Indian Islands. Its zoological peculiarities are almost as
marked as those of Australia, which, however, it far exceeds in the extreme
richness and variety of all its forms of life. To show how distinct it is
from all the other regions of the globe, we need only enumerate some of the
best known and more conspicuous of the animal forms which are peculiar to
it. Such are, among mammalia--the prehensile-tailed monkeys and the
marmosets, the blood-sucking bats, the coati-mundis, the peccaries, the
llamas and alpacas, the chinchillas, the agoutis, the sloths, the
armadillos, and the ant-eaters; a series of types more varied, and more
distinct from those of the rest of the world than any other continent can
boast of. Among birds we have the charming sugar-birds, forming the family
Coerebidae; the immense and wonderfully varied group of tanagers; the
exquisite little manakins, and the gorgeously-coloured chatterers; the host
of tree-creepers of the family Dendrocolaptidae; the wonderful toucans; the
puff-birds, jacamars, todies and motmots; the marvellous assemblage of four
hundred distinct kinds of humming-birds; the gorgeous macaws; the
curassows, the trumpeters, and the sun-bitterns. Here again there is no
other continent or region that can produce such an assemblage of remarkable
and perfectly distinct groups of birds; and no less wonderful is its
richness in species, since these fully equal, if they do not surpass, those
of the {52} two great tropical regions of the Eastern Hemisphere (the
Ethiopian and the Oriental) combined.

As an additional indication of the distinctness and isolation of the
Neotropical region from all others, and especially from the whole Eastern
Hemisphere, we must say something of the otherwise widely distributed
groups which are absent. Among mammalia we have first the order
Insectivora, entirely absent from South America, though a few species are
found in Central America and the West Indies; the Viverridae or civet
family is wholly wanting, as are every form of sheep, oxen, or antelopes;
while the swine, the elephants, and the rhinoceroses of the old world are
represented by the diminutive peccaries and tapirs.

Among birds we have to notice the absence of tits, true flycatchers,
shrikes, sunbirds, starlings, larks (except a solitary species in the
Andes), rollers, bee-eaters, and pheasants, while warblers are very scarce,
and the almos