DISTRIBUTION OF BIRDS IN CEYLON, 3 
Wallace was so struck with the peculiarities shown in the 
fauna of Southern India and Ceylon that he made them into 
one of the four sub-regions of the Oriental Region ; the others 
being the Indian—which took in the rest of India ; the Indo- 
Chinese, comprising Burma, Siam, and South China ; and the 
Indo-Malayan, which included the Malay Peninsula, the 
Philippines, and the Oriental portion of the Archipelago. 
More recent researches have extended the range of many 
of the animals supposed by Wallace to be peculiar to the 
Ceylonese sub-region and have modified Wallace’s grouping. 
So far as India is concerned, a full summary of our know- 
ledge of the subject will be found in a paper read in 1900 before 
the Royal Society by Dr. Blanford, on the “ Distribution of 
Vertebrate Animals in India, Ceylon, and Burma.’’* 
As Dr. Blanford is one of the foremost Indian Geologists, the 
author of the volume on Mammals in “‘ The Fauna of British 
India,” part author of the four volumes on Birds, and editor 
of the whole series relating to Vertebrates, one could scarcely 
find an authority more competent to deal with the subject. 
In this paper Dr. Blanford divides the Indian Empire into 
the following five primary geographical divisions :— 
A.—The Indo-Gangetic Plain. 
B.—The Indian Peninsula. 
C.—Ceylon. 
D.—The Himalayas. 
K.—Assam and Burma. 
These five regions are again subdivided into nineteen 
zoo-geographical tracts. 
The Indian Peninsula splits up into— 
No. 4.—The Central Indian or Rajputana tract. 
No. 5.—The Deccan tract. 
No. 6.—The Behar-Orissa tract. 
No. 7.—The Carnatic or Madras tract, which includes that 
part of the peninsula south of the river Kistna and east of 
the Western Ghauts, thus comprising the Carnatic and Mysore. 
This tract is fairly dry, the average rainfall being 35 inches. 

* « Phil. Transactions of the Royal Society,” Series B., Vol. CXCIV., 
1901, pp. 335-436. 
