Why horses should be found in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and not in
America, is not obvious; the explanation that the conditions of life in
America are unfavourable to their existence, and that, therefore, they
had not been created there, evidently does not apply; for when the
invading Spaniards, or our own yeomen farmers, conveyed horses to these
countries for their own use, they were found to thrive well and
multiply very rapidly; and many are even now running wild in those
countries, and in a perfectly natural condition. Now, suppose we were
to do for every animal what we have here done for the Horse,--that is,
to mark off and distinguish the particular district or region to which
each belonged; and supposing we tabulated all these results, that would
be called the Geographical Distribution of animals, while a
corresponding study of plants would yield as a result the Geographical
Distribution of plants.
I pass on from that now, as I merely wished to explain to you what I
meant by the use of the term 'Geographical Distribution.
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