Ensaio geográfico sobre o vocabulário zoológico popular do Brasil

Resumo

The author, well known specialist in geological subjets of Brazil, is an incontested authority in Brazilian zoo geography.

Presently he prepares a dictionary of animals from Brazil which contains about 2.500 remarks in a volume of 800 pages with 600 illustrations.

In this article the author does a geographical essay of the popular zoologie vocabulary of Brazil showing interesting exemples of animals' names given by people in different parts of the country, pointing out the resemblances and the divergences.

He remarks the exactness of the natives' designations in which are appointed characteristic signs of the animal in question and shows the generalization in all the country of these native term signifying animals' names what proves the enormous geographical extension of the tupiguarani language in primeval ages.

The author records the fact that there is a great number of animals' specimens which find their "habitat" in all Brazil without showing sensible differences, fact noted not only with animals of easy locomotion but also with fishes specimens which exist in the different hidrographical basins of the country.

In his essay, the author explains the usual designations of animals of the Amazon region comparing with the designation of the same specimens in other regions of the country; he studies the most important animals' specimens of the nordeast region showing similarities and divergences of designations when compared to other regions mostly when compared with the amazon region and then be analizes the usual designations in the meridional .part of the country.

From the study of these three regions the author concludes: that the similarity of the zoological vocabulary in the different regions of the country is remarkable; that you find already a sufficient documentation to the acknowledgment of the terminological divergences in the Amazon. nordeast and meridional regions; that there are two characterized sub-regions: one in the nordeast. placed in the state of Baía where you note the african influence; the second one in the meridional regions localized in the Rio Grande do Sul in which the zoological designation accuse the frontier creole influence.