Element in the Fauna of India. 279 



accurate as Jerdon's * Mammals' and 'Birds ' generally are in 

 questions of distribution, some geographical expressions are 

 very loosely used. Thus when Jerdon uses the term Central 

 India, he sometimes means the country near Ndgpiir, some- 

 times the region known politically as Central India, com- 

 prising Eajputana, Indore, and Gwalior, sometimes Chutia 

 Nagpur, a tract of country with a very different fauna. 



I regret to say that I have not now time to give even tlie 

 details I have accumulated on the subject ; all I can do is to 

 attempt a meagre criticism of Mr. Wallace's lists of the 

 fauna of India ; but I think I can show that there really is 

 better reason than Mr. Wallace supposes for inferring a dis- 

 tinct relationship between the fauna of the greater part of 

 India and that of Africa. Were the African affinities of the 

 Indian fauna so small as would be inferred from the details 

 given in the ' Geographical Distribution of Animals,' vol. i. 

 pp. 321-326, I should have to confess that I had committed 

 a great error, and that Messrs. Blyth and Stoliczka were 

 equally mistaken in insisting on the strong Ethiopian affinities 

 of the Indian fauna. A little consideration will, I think, show 

 that in some cases Mr. Wallace is mistaken, and that a care- 

 ful analysis of the whole question will lead to a different 

 conclusion. 



Before proceeding to criticise Mr. Wallace's lists I have 

 two remarks to make. I will preface them by saying that 

 nothing is further from my wish than to express an unfavour- 

 able opinion of Mr. Wallace's work. I believe that he has 

 done his best to arrive at an unbiassed conclusion, and that 

 where he has failed, as in this instance I think he has, the 

 fault is chiefly that of the authorities on whom he had to 

 depend. 



The first remark I have to make is this : — India is in con- 

 nexion with the Indo-Malay countries ; and wide-ranging 

 species, of mammals and birds especially, find no impediment 

 in extending themselves throughout. This acts in two ways. 

 It hinders a tendency to the formation of distinct types through 

 isolation ; and when a species by ranging to a distant region 

 becomes modified the links in the chain of modified forms are 

 more or less well preserved. If the whole of Burma', the 

 Malay peninsula, Siam, Sumatra, Java, and the other 

 countries between India and China, south of the limits of the 

 Palaearctic region, and as far east as the parallel of Canton, 

 had been buried beneath the sea since, at all events, a period 

 long antecedent to the glacial epoch, if, moreover, a belt of 

 well-wooded country extended across the Indian Ocean and 

 connected Eastern Africa with India, we should probably find 



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