348 GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION 
Further subdivision seems only possible in the case of the first 
of these four Provinces above named—the Libyan, which may 
perhaps be broken up into four subprovinces—an Arabian, an 
Egyptian, an Abyssinian, and a Gambian; but no boundaries can be 
assigned for any but the first, and that has precisely the fewest 
possible characteristics, so that the propriety of its recognition, 
except on purely geographical grounds, is most questionable. We 
may doubt whether it has more than half a dozen peculiar species 
if we exclude from the number those of the Ghor, or the valley of 
the Jordan and the depressed basin of the Dead Sea, which we 
must regard as an outlier of the Province ; but then we know very 
little of the zoology of any part of Arabia, save the peninsula of 
Sinai, the desert of the Tih, and a few places on the sea-coast.1 The 
species of Birds which seem to be peculiar to the Jordan basin are 
said to be eleven in number,? many of them showing Indian consan- 
guinity, though the Ethiopian element on the whole predominates, 
and especially in Amydrus tristrami, the name of which commemor- 
ates the naturalist to whom we owe most of our information as 
to the Fauna of this singular district. 
The Egyptian subprovince, so far as regards the valley of the 
Lower Nile, is remarkable for being overrun by migrants from the 
north during the winter, and since it is chiefly from the observa- 
tions of travellers at this season that most of our knowledge is 
derived, it is perhaps not very wonderful that some zoogeographers 
have included this district within the Palearctic area. But a little 
reflexion will shew that to obtain a right estimate of the Fauna of 
any country we should take count of the animals which are its 
natives and have their home there rather than of those which resort 
to it as visitors, without remaining to breed within its limits. Now 
the number of species of Birds which appear in Egypt and Nubia, 
as given by Captain Shelley,? who is still the latest and best author- 
ity, is 352, though many of them, he says, are of doubtful occur- 
rence. Of these more than 230 are natives of the Palearctic 
Subregion, but only between 50 and 60, or about one-quarter of 
them, remain to breed in Egypt, and of this number a considerable 
proportion do not breed in Europe, but only in the Barbary States. 
The Palearctic species, which are only winter-visitors, to the number 
say of 180, should therefore be left out of the reckoning. On the other 
hand, more than 70 species, which are not Palearctic, are true 
1 Considering our ignorance of the Fauna of Arabia, I have not been able to 
see why Mr. Wallace assigned the northern extratropical portion of it to the 
Palearctic area. With our present want of information, any line of demarcation 
drawn across the country must be purely arbitrary, for I am not aware of any 
evidence favouring such a division. 
2 Tristram, Fauna and Flora of Palestine (pref. pp. ix. x.) London: 1884. 
3 Handbook to the Birds of Egypt. London: 1872. 
