Pl. faunæ; also faunas. [mod. L. fauna, an application of the pr. name of a rural goddess, the sister of Faunus (see FAUN); used by Linnæus in the title of his work Fauna Suecica (1746), a companion volume to his Flora Suecica (1745). Cf. FLORA.]
1. A collective term applied to the animals or animal life of any particular region or epoch.
1771. Let., in G. White, Selborne (1876), 143. He should be able to account for the … manner of life of the animals of his own Fauna.
1828. Fleming, Hist. Brit. Anim., Pref. 7. A few additions were afterwards made to this division of the British Fauna by Ray.
1844. Vest. Creat. (ed. 4), 99. Fossils do not form the sole memorials of the extraordinary fauna of this age.
1846. M’Culloch, Acc. Brit. Empire (1845), I. 133. The fauna of tropical America.
1851. G. F. Richardson, Geol. (1855), 448. The crustacea were represented in the carboniferous fauna.
1859. Darwin, Orig. Spec., xii. (1873), 323. Changes of level in the land must also have been highly influential: a narrow isthmus now separates two marine faunas; submerge it, or let it formerly have been submerged, and the two faunas will now blend together, or may formerly have blended.
1877. Le Conte, Elem. Geol. (1879), 155. There are, therefore, geographical faunæ and floræ and geological faunæ and floræ.
2. A treatise upon the animals of any geographical area or geological period.
1885. A. Newton in Encycl. Brit. (ed. 9), XVIII. 16, ‘Ornithology.’ A rapid survey of the ornithological works which come more or less under the designation of ‘Faunæ.’
