GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION 351 
collation and comparison before their bearings can be understood. 
Such results as have been obtained are quite out of proportion to 
the extent of country whence they have been gathered. As it is, 
there cannot have been fewer than 800 species observed in what 
may be deemed to be this Province, but we must bear in mind that 
the number, even at the very extremity of Africa, is swollen by the 
inclusion of many which have their home in the Palearctic Sub- 
region, and should be by no means reckoned as belonging to the 
Ethiopian Region. ‘These are not limited to birds of well-known 
wandering habit like the TURNSTONE, the WHIMBREL, and numerous 
Limicolx, or those possessing powers of endurance like the Cuckow 
or the NIGHTJAR, or of strong and speedy flight as the SwirT 
and the SwALLow, but they include many of the more weakly- 
winged (as commonly considered) of our summer-visitants, the 
SEDGE-BIRD, the Willow-WREN, the Garden-WARBLER, and others. 
Nor is this seasonal influx confined to birds of European birth, 
which need not greatly diverge from their meridian in their 
journey ; the most eastern part of Asia sends its representatives, of 
which Lrythropus amwrensis is a remarkable example. <A revised 
list of South-African Birds has yet to be made out before we can 
state with any accuracy what are to be deemed members of the 
Caffrarian Avifauna. 
Only one island can with certainty be affiliated to this Province, 
and that is St. Helena, where the indigenous Land-birds, if any 
there were, have probably been extirpated with most of its original 
and peculiar flora. Yet it seems to be a curious fact that this 
isolated spot possesses a peculiar Water-bird, albeit of a group that 
greatly affects dry places. This is the so-called WIRE-BIRD, a 
Ringed Plover, Agialitis sanctx-helenx ; and, though belonging to a 
genus the members of which are remarkable for very wide distri- 
bution, it is not known to have occurred off the island. Tristan da 
Cunha, commonly assigned to this Region, and therefore to this 
Province, seems to have at least as much aftinity to the Neotropical, 
and Ascension appears to have no indigenous Land-birds whatever, 
so that its appropriation must remain in doubt. 
collected the ornithological papers contributed by the late Sir Andrew Smith to 
The South African Journal between 1830 and 1834, and they were reprinted in 
1880 by the Willughby Society, but neither these nor the volume containing 
the Birds in the Illustrations of the Zoology of South Africa, published by that 
excellent naturalist (London: 1838-1849) give a connected account of the 
ornithology of this Province. The most comprehensive work is that by Mr. 
Layard before mentioned, and next to it Andersson’s Notes on the Birds of 
Damara Land (London: 1872), edited by the late Mr. Gurney, who also com- 
municated to The bis a long series of valuable articles on the Birds of Natal 
based on the observations and collections of Mr. Ayres. Finally may be men- 
tioned the Beitrige zur Ornithologie Sudafricas, by HH. Holub and yon 
Pelzeln (Wien: 1882). 
