296 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OP 



toryof Palestine. Of these 230 were land and 92 water birds,?, e., Natatores and 

 the wading Cursores. Of the 230, 79 are common to the British Islands, and 

 36 of them are found in China, but a small proportion extending their range 

 to both these extremes. Of the water birds, which are always more widely 

 distributed, 55 of the 92 are British and 5*7 Chinese. Twenty-seven appear to 

 be confined to Palestine and to the immediately adjacent country ; the largest 

 of these is a crow. 



Taking the 230 land birds at a glance, we find the utter absence of so many 

 of the well known forms that enliven our grounds and forests. The absence 

 of Tanagridte and Icteridae changes the aspect of the bird-fauna at once. 

 What have ^e here then of nine-quilled Oscines to enliven the meadows like 

 our swarms of blackbirds, or fill the tree tops and thickets with flutter like 

 our wood warblers? Notliing ; for the twenty-four species of finches, Frin- 

 gillidte, will but balance our own, though the genera are all different but 

 four, and they the most weakly represented by species. We must look to 

 the higher series, the ten-quilled song birds, for the missing rank and file. 

 While a much larger extent of the Eastern United States possesses fifty 

 species of these types, the little Palestine has already furnished a list of one 

 hundred and twenty-eight. 



First, of the crows, which verge nearest Icteridae by the starlings, we have 

 13 species against five in our district of the United States, and not less than 

 seven of the type genus Corvus, to our one common and two rare. Of these, 

 two are of the larger species, the ravens. If we turn to the cheerful larks, 

 we find the proportion again the same ; fifteen species for Palestine and one 

 for the whole United States. One congener of our species occurs there; the 

 other genera call to mind the African Deserts and Russian Steppes. Mota- 

 cillidae, again, ten to one against our fauna. We have two Tauagrida3 to 

 imitate them, beside the true relative. In swallows we are about equal, and 

 in the forest-haunting Paridaj — titmice and wrens — we exceed a little ; but 

 the comparison of Sylviidae and Turdidas is most striking. These highest of 

 the bird series, especially made to gladden man's haunts with song, exceed 

 in number all the other ten-quilled Oscines together inhabiting Palestine, 

 amounting to seventy-five species. In our corresponding region of the United 

 States nineteen species is the quantum. It is true no mocking bird or wood- 

 robin is known away from our shores, but Palestine has the nightingale, the 

 black-cap and the true warblers or Sylvias, which, while they glean from 

 shrub and tree their smallest insect enemies, as do our equally numerous 

 small Tanagridaj, have much louder and sweeter voices. 



Our solitary blue-bird represents the long-winged Turdidae ; in the Holy 

 Land there are twenty species corresponding, though none are of our genus. 

 There are indeed but three genera of these two families common to both 

 couHtries. One of these, Lanius, the butcher-bird, occurs here in one new 

 species, in Palestine in six. 



Turning now to a lower series, we look in vain for Clamatorial perchers ; 

 that series which gives us the fierce king-bird and querulous pewee, and 

 which peoples South America with thrush and warbler, and shrike and tree- 

 creeper. 



'**"In taking a hasty glance over the lower groups, where the carotid arteries 

 begin to be double, as the Syndactyli, we find Palestine too far from the 

 tropics to present us with much array ; but in the related zygodactyles our 

 forest-crowned continent must claim great preeminence. It has but a solitary 

 Picus, while we have eight in the immediate neighborhood of lat. 40°, in 

 our Eastern States. 



I will close with the birds of prey. Four swamp-hawks, eleven species of 

 falcons, four kites, and eight native eagles, form a list unequalled in the annals 

 of nobility by any land. There are together thirty-one species of Falconids, 

 and of Vultures, four. The eagles appear to be all common, among them 



[Oct. 



