GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION 357 



Hainan and Formosa. In its western part it is a mere strip of 

 territory, and this alone can at present be recognized as a Pro- 

 vince — the "Himalayan" — but as already remarked its influence 

 is felt in widely -separated upland districts, though here it is 

 impossible to give details of them. Few countries seem to have a 

 richer Avifauna than those which compose this Himalayan Pro- 

 vince. Cashmere, the most westerly of them, is said to produce 

 more than 170 species of Land-birds, of which 70 are peculiar to 

 the district. Nepal, which is the next of which any satisfactory 

 account can be given, has more than 550 species of Land-birds, 

 80 of which are peculiar to or characteristic of the Himalayan 

 Province, a number that in Sikkim rises to 270. Further to the 

 eastward our information is less, for though Mr. Hume has pub- 

 lished {Stray Feathers, xi. pp. 1-353) a list of the Birds of Manipur, 

 Assam, Sylhet, and Cachar, which shews that these countries have 

 in the aggregate a rich population, his results have unfortunately 

 not been tabulated, and none that were trustworthy could be 

 educed but by some one possessed of local knowledge. Burma 

 must be taken next, but its highlands may be said to be ornitho- 

 logically unexplored, for Blyth's catalogue (/. A. S. B. 1875, part ii. 

 pp. 54-167), edited after his death by the late Mr. Arthur Grote, 

 with notes by the late Lord Tweeddale, and Mr. Oates's Birds of 

 British Burmah (London : 1883), good as they are, only treat of the 

 lower part of that country. Still they furnish a very fair account 

 of the valley of the Irrawadi so far as the British frontier then 

 reached, that is to say to the limits of Pegu, together with the 

 adjoining state of Karennee, and Tenasserim, to the isthmus of 

 Krau. All this district is especially rich in species of the peculiarly 

 Indian Family, Burylsemida} (Broadbill) possessing a majority 

 of the known forms. 



We ought now to retrace our steps northward and notice 

 China, but this is a branch of the subject on which it is as yet 

 impossible to form an opinion. The late Mr. Swinhoe was un- 

 questionably one of the chief authorities on Chinese ornithology, 

 but his duties confined him almost entirely to the coast, so that he 

 had only the opportunity of becoming acquainted Avith the out- 

 skirts of that interesting country. Moreover, death prematurely 

 cut short his labours, and the results of his multitudinous con- 

 tributions to our knowledge have never been tabulated. It would 

 be impossible to eliminate from his latest Catalogue of the Birds of 

 China {Proc. Zool. Soc. 1871, pp. 337-343) those of the 675 species 

 therein enumerated which do not strictly belong to the part of the 

 Celestial Empire lying within our present bounds, to say nothing 

 of the difficulty, which he himself seems to have felt, of separat- 

 ing the Bird s-of -passage from the natives. A more successful 

 attempt has been made by the Abb6 David, who had much better 



