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Foreword 
In this comprehensive volume Dr. Tate describes the varied 
mammalian life that stretches southward from the bleak tundra 
of the Arctic to the steaming jungles of Burma and Malaysia, 
and from Lake Baikal, the Gobi desert and Tibetan plateau in 
the west, eastward to the shores of the Pacific. It was from the 
deserts, forests, mountains and plains of this vast region that 
the mammals of the islands of the Asiatic continental shelf — 
Java, Sumatra, Borneo, Palawan, Formosa and Japan — were 
originally derived. The present volume therefore forms an im- 
portant supplement to the Handbooks of the Pacific World 
Series sponsored by the American Committee for International 
Wild Life Protection and devoted to the natural history of the 
Pacific's far-flung island archipelagos. The great majority of 
Asiatic creatures herein described are strangers to the American 
public. A few spectacular species are known through mounted 
specimens in museum habitat groups, or living examples in 
zoological parks — the gibbon and panda, as well as the familiar 
tiger, Indian rhinoceros and elephant. Singular as it may seem, 
forms allied to the Asiatic elephant, camel and Saiga antelope 
were among the contemporaries of man in pre-glacial America. 
The book's carefully prepared chapters and fine original pen 
sketches will bring to lovers of wild life, layman and zoologist, 
much of interest regarding the habitats, relationships, life histo- 
ries and idiosyncrasies of the still surviving members of eastern 
Asia's widely diversified faunas. The distribution of many of 
these species through the pressure of human populations is ever 
becoming more circumscribed. The volume is authoritatively 
and entertainingly written by one of America's widely travelled 
