NATURAL HISTORY OF CHINA— SOWERBY 363 



It has already been stated that China is the headquarters of the 

 pheasant family, and if any one point more than another character- 

 izes the avi-fauna of the country it is this. Perhaps another char- 

 acteristic that may be mentioned here is the number and variety of 

 the timaline birds — babblers, laughing thrushes, and the like — that 

 occur. In the southern provinces we have such remarkable birds as 

 the crow-pheasant, crow tits, and trogons, nor should we neglect to 

 mention the numerous and beautiful flycatchers that inhabit this part 

 of the earth. 



The birds of northeast China, Corea, and Manchuria are remark- 

 ably similar to those of Europe and the British Isles, and a study of 

 the subject reveals the fact that closely related forms, each grading 

 into the next, occur all the way from western Europe through Siberia 

 to these easterly regions. 



REPTILES 



In dealing with the reptiles and amphibians, or batrachians. of the 

 country we are confronted with a rather remarkable fact. North of 

 the Yangtse Valley these forms of animal life are very poorly repre- 

 sented, if not in numbers of individuals at least in variety of species, 

 while south of it there is a great abundance of both. The explanation 

 is not far to seek, and it lies in the climatic conditions to be encount- 

 ered in the two areas. These cold-blooded vertebrates are a weak rem- 

 nant of the great reptiles that lived in the days when the earth was 

 much warmer than it is to-day, when the climate was far more humid 

 and vegetation infinitely more luxurious and prevalent. Life for these 

 great saurians was comparatively easy, and so they did not evolve 

 any means of protecting themselves against the less favorable con- 

 ditions that followed the Carboniferous and Cretaceous periods of 

 the earth's history. Their descendants survived, but, with the excep- 

 tion of the crocodiles and alligators, only as very small replicas of 

 the great monsters that once swarmed. And these survivors can no 

 more withstand severe climatic conditions than could their ancestors. 

 Only a comparatively few reptiles have been able to adapt themselves 

 to a desert environment, and, even so, usually in warm countries. 

 The bitter cold of the north China winter is too much for them. 

 Similarly amphibians originated in the dense tropical jungles, 

 swamps, and forests of the Carboniferous age, where their particular 

 mode of reproduction and development from an egg laid in the water 

 through an aquatic stage to a land animal was evolved. This they 

 have retained, but they, too, have become greatly reduced in size and 

 can only live where a congenial environment is to be found. Thus the 

 dryness of the north China climate is inimical to them. Central 

 China, on the other hand, offers much more favorable conditions to 

 both reptiles and amphibians, and so we have a corresponding increase 



