226 ZOOLOGICAL GEOGRAPHY. [PART III. 
extremity of which should perhaps come in the Oriental region. 
The great richness of this sub-region compared with that of 
Siberia is well shown by the fact, that a list of all the known 
land-birds of East Siberia, including Dahuria and the compara- 
tively fertile Amoor Valley, contains only 190 species ; whereas 
Pére David’s catalogue of the birds of Northern China with 
adjacent parts of East Thibet and Mongolia (a very much 
smaller area) contains for the same families 366 species. Of the 
Siberian birds more than 50 per cent. are European species, while 
those of the Manchurian sub-region comprise about half that 
proportion of land-birds which are identical with those of 
Europe. 
Japan is no doubt very imperfectly known, as only 134 land- 
birds are recorded from it. Of these twenty-two are peculiar 
species, a number that would probably be diminished were the 
Corea to be explored. Of the genera, only nine are Indo- 
Malayan, while forty-three are Palearctic. 
Plate III.—Scene on the Borders of North-West China and 
Mongolia with Characteristic Mammalia and Birds. — The 
mountainous districts of Northern China, with the adjacent 
portions of Thibet and Mongolia, are the head-quarters of the 
pheasant tribe, many of the most beautiful and remarkable 
species being found there only. In the north-western provinces 
of China and the southern parts of Mongolia may be found the 
species figured. That in the foreground is the superb golden 
pheasant (Thaumalea picta), a bird that can hardly be surpassed 
for splendour of plumage by any denizen of the tropics. The 
large bird perched above is the eared pheasant (Crossoptilon 
auritum), a species of comparatively sober plumage but of 
remarkable and elegant form. In the middle distance is Pallas’s 
sand grouse (Syrrhaptes paradoxus), a curious bird, whose native 
country seems to be the high plains of Northern Asia, but which 
often abounds near Pekin, and in 1863 astonished European 
ornithologists by appearing in considerable numbers in Central 
and Western Europe, in every part of Great Britain, and even 
in Treland. 
The quadruped figured is the curious racoon dog (Nycterewtes 
