CHAP, XI.] .THE ETHIOPIAN REGION. 259 
moderate elevation. The eastern portion reaches from about the 
second cataract of the Nile, or perhaps from about the parallel 
of 20° N. Latitude, down to about 20°S. Latitude, and from the 
-east coast to where the great forest region commences, or to Lake 
Tanganyika and about the meridian of 28° to 30° E. Longitude. 
The greater part of this tract is a lofty plateau. 
The surface of all this sub-region is generally open, covered 
- with a vegetation of high grasses or thorny shrubs, with scat- 
tered trees and isolated patches of forest in favourable situations. 
The only parts where extensive continuous forests occur, are on 
the eastern and western slopes of the great Abyssinian plateau, 
and on the Mozambique coast from Zanzibar to Sofala. The 
whole of this great district has one general zoological character. 
Many species range from Senegal to Abyssinia, others from 
Abyssinia to the Zambesi, and a few, as Mungos fasciatus and 
Phacocherus ethiopicus, range over the entire sub-region. Fenne- 
cus, Ictonyx, and several genera of antelopes, characterise every 
part of it, as do many genera of birds. Coracias neevia, Cory- 
thornis cyanostigma, Tockus nasutus, T. erythrorhynchus, Parus 
leucopterus, Buphaga africana, Vidua paradisea, are examples 
‘of species, which are found in the Gambia, Abyssinia and South 
East Africa, but not in the West African sub-region; and con- 
sidering how very little is known of the natural history 
of the country immediately south of the Sahara, it may 
well be supposed that these are only a small portion of the 
species really common to the whole area in question, and which 
prove its fundamental unity. 
Although this sub-region is so extensive and so generally 
uniform in physical features, it is by far the least peculiar part 
of Africa. It possesses, of course, all those wide-spread Ethiopian 
types which inhabit every part of the region, but it has hardly 
any special features of its own. The few genera which are 
peculiar to it have generally a limited range, and for the most 
part belong, either to the isolated mountain-plateau of Abyssinia 
which is almost as much Palearctic as Ethiopian, or to the woody 
districts of Mozambique where the fauna has more of a West 
or South African character. 
