1886.] PROCEEDINGS OF UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 653 



water palaearctic species, while Pacific forms largely predominate 

 among the sea-birds proper. Indeed, there are but four or five of the 

 American species which can be considered liuviatile, even by stretching 

 that term, and one of them, Anser albifrons gamheli, is a sub-species at 

 best. On the other hand, of birds of the Atlantic, and not circumpolar, 

 but three gulls reach Japan, and one of these may possibly prove to be 

 an Eastern representative of the true European species. The rest are 

 peculiar to the Pacific Ocean, two-thirds of them being found on its 

 American side. We thus see that so far as the water-birds are con- 

 cerned Japan is, in its fresh-water inhabitants, Eurasian, and in its 

 marine, Asio-Pacific. We learn nothing from this result, however, but 

 that Japan is in its right place, or rather that, considering its position, 

 its water-ornis is as it should be. 



The second table, prepared so far as materials at hand will permit, 

 exhibits the distribution of sea-birds peculiar to the North Pacific. 

 The middle column, which enumerates those whose range extends across 

 that ocean, is really no more than column four ot the other table — the 

 fresh-water species being omitted — with one bird in addition inhabiting 

 the peninsula ot Kamtschatka, which is not as yet known in Japan. It is 

 ■ instructive in that it shows that the most northern species are nearly all 

 found on both sides, as might have been expected, owing to the near ap- 

 proach of the two continents in the north and their wide divergence south- 

 wards, while of the southern there are, when distinct, usually allied species 

 representing the absent ones, and forming a corresi^onding marine avi- 

 fauna. This, although not strictly true, is sufficiently so for general 

 comparison ; therefore it has been considered as well to make the fol- 

 lowing notes of reference, not only to draw attention to the exceptions, 

 but to give the authorities for some of the determinations of species 

 and sub-species which now stand under names differing from these 

 hitherto used in published lists of Japan birds. 



It will be observed that the number of birds peculiar to the American 

 coast is more than double those of the Asiatic side. This is, perhaps, in 

 great part due to the ornithology of the former having been much more 

 fully worked up than that of the western side ; for when we consider 

 the extensive range in latitude of the Japanese Islands, from Cape 

 Lopatka, at the extremity of Kamtschatka, to the Liu-Kius and Bonins, 

 on the verge of the tropics, it cannot be doubted that there is a great 

 field for zoological research, well worthy of more particular investiga- 

 tion than has yet been bestowed upon it. 



So far Japan has been spoken of as a whole, and, while it has not 

 been considered necessary to analyze very particularly the outside 

 range of its water-birds, as those of Kamtschatka, which so nearly agree, 

 have been fully gone into by Mr. Stejneger in his " Conclusions," form- 

 ing Part III of his " Ornithological Explorations,"* it may be as well 



•Bull. No. 29, U. S. Nat. Mus., 1885, pp. 332-359. 



