Geography of the central Andes; a handbook to accompany the La Paz sheet of the map of Hispanic America on the millionth scale by Ogilvie Alan Grant 1887-

Author:Ogilvie, Alan Grant, 1887- [from old catalog]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Physical geography
Publisher: [New York] The American geographical society of New York
Published: 1922-03-25T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER VIII ANIMAL LIFE

If it were possible to take a census of individuals of the animal kingdom apart from man in the area of the La Paz sheet and compare the total with that of a world average for similar areas, the La Paz total would probably be far above the average. This is because life is peculiarly abundant in two parts of the area— along the coast both in the water and near it and in the forests of the northeast. The reasons for the abundance of marine forms in the cool coastal waters and consequently of those which prey upon them, have been stated in Chapter IV; and it is because the forests are upon the slopes of the Andes that animals are so numerous there, the varied altitudinal assortment of climatic and vegetation conditions leading not only to a great multiplicity of species but also to remarkable fecundity in reproduction. The truth of this statement is perhaps not very obvious to the casual observer, for the chief evidence of the teeming life of the sea is the great flocks of birds about its margin; and again, in the recesses of the forest, while birds and insects are relatively visible, the mammals are but rarely seen by man. In the great intervening region of puna, mountain, and desert, on the other hand, concealment is more difficult, and such is the monotony of the landscape that every living creature picked out makes a distinct impression upon the traveler.

The same causes which have determined the main division of the vegetation at the eastern crest of the Andes account for an equally important frontier between the two great faunal regions. It is due to its high Andean fringe that the continent of South America—the so-called Neo-Tropical Region of zoologists—is not subdivided by a parallel of latitude but by a diagonal line which leaves the Pacific near the equator and reaches the Atlantic in latitude 30 0 S. All but the forested sec-

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