GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION 357 
Hainan and Formosa. In its western part it is a mere strip of 
territory, and this alone can at present be recognized as a Pro- 
vince—the “ Himalayan ”—but as already remarked its influence 
is felt in widely-separated upland districts, though here it is 
impossible to give details of them. Few countries seem to have a 
richer Avifauna than those which compose this Himalayan Pro- 
vince. Cashmere, the most westerly of them, is said to produce 
more than 170 species of Land-birds, of which 70 are peculiar to 
the district. Nepal, which is the next of which any satisfactory 
account can be given, has more than 550 species of Land-birds, 
80 of which are peculiar to or characteristic of the Himalayan 
Province, a number that in Sikkim rises to 270. Further to the 
eastward our information is less, for though Mr. Hume has pub- 
lished (Stray Feathers, xi. pp. 1-353) a list of the Birds of Manipur, 
Assam, Sylhet, and Cachar, which shews that these countries have 
in the aggregate a rich population, his results have unfortunately 
not been tabulated, and none that were trustworthy could be 
educed but by some one possessed of local knowledge. Burma 
must be taken next, but its highlands may be said to be ornitho- 
logically unexplored, for Blyth’s catalogue (J. 4. 8. B. 1875, part ii. 
pp. 54-167), edited after his death by the late Mr. Arthur Grote, 
with notes by the late Lord Tweeddale, and Mr. Oates’s Birds of 
British Burmah (London: 1883), good as they are, only treat of the 
lower part of that country. Still they furnish a very fair account 
of the valley of the Irrawadi so far as the British frontier then 
reached, that is to say to the limits of Pegu, together with the 
adjoining state of Karennee, and Tenasserim, to the isthmus of 
Krau. All this district is especially rich in species of the peculiarly 
Indian Family, Hurylemidx (BROADBILL) possessing a majority 
of the known forms. 
We ought now to retrace our steps northward and _ notice 
China, but this is a branch of the subject on which it is as yet 
- impossible to form an opinion. The late Mr. Swinhoe was un- 
questionably one of the chief authorities on Chinese ornithology, 
but his duties confined him almost entirely to the coast, so that he 
had only the opportunity of becoming acquainted with the out- 
skirts of that interesting country. Moreover, death prematurely 
cut short his labours, and the results of his multitudinous con- 
tributions to our knowledge have never been tabulated. It would 
be impossible to eliminate from his latest Catalogue of the Birds of 
China (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1871, pp. 337-343) those of the 675 species 
therein enumerated which do not strictly belong to the part of the 
Celestial Empire lying within our present bounds, to say nothing 
of the difficulty, which he himself seems to have felt, of separat- 
ing the Birds-of-passage from the natives. A more successful 
attempt has been made by the Abbé David, who had much better 
