1334. The first colonists of La Plata landed with seventy-two horses, in the year 1535, when, owing to a temporary desertion of the colony, the animals ran wild; and in 1580, only forty-five years afterwards, it had reached the Straits of Magellan. The ass has a more restricted range than the horse, not being capable of enduring so great a degree of cold, though usually far from being considered a delicate animal. To the warmer parts of the temperate zone, between the 20th and the 40th parallels of latitude, the ass seems best adapted, not propagating much beyond the 60th, and only occurring in a state of degeneration beyond the 52nd. The sheep and goat tribe are widely spread, equally supporting the extremes of temperature. According to Zimmerman, the _Argali_ or _Mouflon_, the original race of sheep, still exists on all the great mountains of the two continents; and the _Capricorn_ and _Ibex_, the ancestors of the common goat inhabit the high European elevations. From the 64th degree of north latitude the hog is met with all over the old continent, and also in the islands of the Indian Ocean, peopled by the Malay race; and since its introduction into the New World, it has diffused itself over it, from the 50th parallel north as far as Patagonia. Originally the cat was not known in America, nor in any part of Oceanica; but it has now spread into almost every country of the globe. Among animals entirely wild, the most extensively diffused, are the fox, hare, squirrel, and ermine; but the species are different in every region of the world; nor is there perhaps one example to be found of a species perfectly identical naturally existing in distant localities of the earth. [Verse: "His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it; and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof."--PSALM XIX.] Respecting the _internal constitution and heat of the earth_, differences of opinion, and some very wild speculation have existed. We find in Humboldt's "Cosmos" the following remarks:--