The Home Territories of Eastern 
Asiatic Mammals 
A geographical region as vast as the eastern face of Asia can 
be described in this work only in barest outline. Discussion here 
is confined to coast-line, mountain and river systems, swamps 
and lakes, and deserts. It is useful to learn from the accompany- 
ing map (fig. 1) the names of some of the political areas, 
countries and provinces, though they have no direct bearing on 
natural history. The differences between those parts of the coast 
that are low and flat and those that meet the sea as cliffs are not 
brought out in maps. Moreover, in a work of this nature, no 
coast of such enormous length can be described point by point. 
Wherever the coast is seen on the map to be closely backed by 
ranges of hills, coastal cliffs are likely to be numerous. On the 
contrary, the coast may be low and even marshy at the mouths 
of large rivers, or where no hills appear nearby. 
Mountain Systems and River Systems in a large conti- 
nental area that are intertwined and interdependent should be 
considered together (fig. 2). Divides or heights of land, the 
bounding features of river basins, may rise so slightly as to be 
scarcely perceptible; they may be sufficiently prominent to be 
called hills ; or they may tower up to snow-capped summits. 
From the northeast of Siberia the central hills of the Bering 
Peninsula, after giving off a spur that runs down the Kam- 
chatka Peninsula, rapidly increase westward to mountain pro- 
portions, the Stanovoi Mountains. This great range, turning 
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