we may give three tons and a half to each of the five rhinoceroses;
perhaps a ton to the giraffe, and half to the bos caffer as well as to
the elan (a large ox weighs from 1200 to 1500 pounds). This will give
an average (from the above estimates) of 2.7 of a ton for the ten
largest herbivorous animals of Southern Africa. In South America,
allowing 1200 pounds for the two tapirs together, 550 for the guanaco
and vicuna, 500 for three deer, 300 for the capybara, peccari, and a
monkey, we shall have an average of 250 pounds, which I believe is
overstating the result. The ratio will therefore be as 6048 to 250, or
24 to 1, for the ten largest animals from the two continents.
[8] If we suppose the case of the discovery of a skeleton of a
Greenland whale in a fossil state, not a single cetaceous animal being
known to exist, what naturalist would have ventured conjecture on the
possibility of a carcass so gigantic being supported on the minute
crustacea and mollusca living in the frozen seas of the extreme North?
[9] See Zoological Remarks to Capt. Back's Expedition, by Dr.
Richardson. He says, "The subsoil north of latitude 56 degs. is
perpetually frozen, the thaw on the coast not penetrating above three
feet, and at Bear Lake, in latitude 64 degs., not more than twenty
inches. The frozen substratum does not of itself destroy vegetation,
for forests flourish on the surface, at a distance from the coast."
[10] See Humboldt, Fragments Asiatiques, p. 386: Barton's Geography of
Plants: and Malte Brun. In the latter work it is said that the limit
of the growth of trees in Siberia may be drawn under the parallel of 70
degs.
[11] Sturt's Travels, vol. ii. p. 74.
[12] A Gaucho assured me that he had once seen a snow-white or Albino
variety, and that it was a most beautiful bird.
[13] Burchell's Travels, vol. i. p. 280.
[14] Azara, vol. iv. p. 173.
[15] Lichtenstein, however, asserts (Travels, vol. ii. p. 25) that the
hens begin sitting when they have laid ten or twelve eggs; and that
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