DISTRIBUTION OF BIRDS IN CEYLON. 5 
tracts. Northern Ceylon throws in its lot with the Carnatic ; 
and South-western Ceylon, though not so closely, with the 
Malabar tract. 
If we look at the five tracts of the Indian Peninsula, the 
difference between the fauna of the first four is mostly specific 
and not generic, but the fauna of the Malabar tract differs 
widely from that of the adjoining areas.* 
It was these differences that led Wallace to make Ceylon 
and South India into a separate sub-region. They are largely 
due to the presence of certain isolated species and genera 
which show connections with such widely separated areas as 
the Himalayas, Africa, Malaya, and even Australia. 
The presence of these elements in the fauna of Ceylon is 
described by Dr. Willey in a paper in the first number of 
Spolia Zeylanica,t and their bearing on the past history of 
Ceylon is shown by Wallace in his work, to which I have 
already referred. 
As regards the Australian element, it is practically confined 
to the earthworms, an order low down in the organic scale. 
Such lowly organisms change slowly, and their presence may 
be accounted for by a land connection far back in the geologic 
ages, when a continent stretched from Asia to Australia. The 
African or Madagascan and the Malay elements, many 
geologists hold, may be explained by postulating the existence 
of a great continent, which in tertiary times stretched from 
South India and Ceylon to Madagascar on the one hand and 
to Malaya on the other. It is quite probable, however, that 
our connection with Malaya is rather later than that with 
Madagascar. These peculiar elements are shared in a 
varying degree by Ceylon with the Malabar tract, and I have 
dealt with them now as they belong to a period when Ceylon 
still formed part of the South Indian Continent and had not 
yet become an Island. 
As I believe that an examination of the distribution of the 
Himalayan, Malabar, and Carnatic elements among our birds 

* Blanford : “ Phil. Transactions,” &c., p. 392. 
{ Willey: ‘ Constitution of the Fauna of Ceylon,” Spolia Zeylanica 
Vol. I., Part I., p. 1. 
} ‘‘ Geographical Distribution of Animals,” Vol. I., p. 328. 
§ Wallace, loc. cit., p. 361. 
