9, 10, 11, 12. Travels of Prince Maximilian of Neuwied, of Spix, and Von Martius; Sir R. Schomburgk, in Geographical Transactions; Wallace’s Travels on the Amazon; Squier’s Nicaragua.
13. North American Indians.—Archæologia Americana, Vol. ii.; Transactions of American Ethnological Society; Works of Schoolcraft, Squier, &c.; Smithsonean Contributions to Knowledge.
14. Papers by Dr. King on the Industrial and Intellectual character of the Eskimo, in Transactions of Ethnological Society; Accounts of the Arctic Expedition, by Parry, Ross, &c. &c.
For Ethnology in general—Prichard’s Natural History of Man, five volumes; Ditto, one volume.
The large Greenland hut, boat and furniture, kindly supplied by the Curator of the Ethnological Museum at Copenhagen (Professor Thomsen) reached us after the present pages were in print.
PART II.
ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY.
Animals and plants are not scattered indifferently over the earth’s surface, but are grouped together in assemblages of different kinds. The animals and plants of the British Isles, for example, are wholly distinct from those of the West Indies, and these again from the East Indian kinds. Naturalists, after a long study of the distribution of organised beings, have been enabled to divide the earth’s surface into provinces, each characterised by its peculiar set of inhabitants. The assemblage of organised beings in each province exhibits, when viewed en masse, a general aspect, or facies, independent of its being composed, in part, of kinds of creatures different from those found in any other province. This facies depends on combinations of colour, sculpture, texture, and often minute and insignificant characters, when regarded separately, but when presented in coordination, becoming of importance through their constancy and their influence in determining the leading features of a fauna or flora, or both combined. Even when comparatively few of the characteristic animal and vegetable types of a province are brought together, within a limited space, some notion may thus be conveyed to the spectator of the facies, or aspect of life in that region. This has been attempted in the arrangement of the Geographical Garden in the Crystal Palace.
Organised beings are distributed over the earth and in the sea horizontally and vertically. On their horizontal distribution depend their geographical life-provinces; on their vertical distribution, their arrangement in altitudinal and bathymetrical zones or belts. If we ascend any high mountain, we rise through successive belts of vegetation, each frequented by its favourite form of animal life. We are reminded during our ascent of the successive faunas and floras that we should pass amongst, were we proceeding from the mountain’s base to the pole. If the mountain be sufficiently high, we at length reach a region where all life ceases. So likewise in the sea—if we explore the depths of ocean, and commence our examination on the borders of the shore, we shall find that the animal and vegetable population of the waters are not dispersed indifferently through their depths, but occupy successive levels, or zones. If we go deep enough, vegetable life first disappears, and animal species become so few, comparatively, that we cannot but conclude that we are approaching a point beyond, or rather below which all is desert.