Distribution of Birds. 527 



3. South Africa, i. e., the Cape Colony and adjoining 

 districts. 



4. South-eastern Africa, from the Zambezi up to the Somali 

 coast. 



5. North-eastern Africa, including Abyssinia, Nubia, and 

 Egypt. 



6. Arabia. 



I will take these districts in order and say a few words 

 upon the recent advance that has been effected in each of 

 them as regards our knowledge of its birds. 



In Western Africa, commonly so-called, although great 

 progress has been made and many contributions have ap- 

 peared of late years, amongst which especial mention should 

 be made of Heer Biittikofer's excellent account of the Birds 

 of Liberia (38), no general work on its ornithology has been 

 published since Hartlaub^s ' System ' in 1857. 



In South-western Africa we are more fortunate. Prof. 

 J, V. Barboza Aw Bocage has completed the volume on the 

 Ornithology of Angola (39), which I spoke of as in prepara- 

 tion in my " Address," and it was published at Lisbon in 1881 . 

 It gives us an account of 673 species, to which, however, 

 further additions have since been made by the author himself 

 and his fellow-workers in the Lisbon Museum. We have 

 also several excellent papers by Mr. Biittikofer upon the col- 

 lections made by Mr. van der Kellen in this district (39 g- 

 39 c), and Dr. Reichenow^s account of the collections made 

 by Dr. Falkenstein on the Loango coast (39</). 



As regards the Cape Colony and the adjoining territories, 

 which embrace nearly the whole of what we call " South 

 Africa," a more complete work on the birds is also now 

 available. This is Dr. Bowdler Sharpe's new edition of 

 Layard's ' Birds of South Africa ' (40) , which, though com- 

 menced in 1875, was not finally completed till 1884. Dr. 

 Sharpe has wisely included in his work all species known to him 

 to occur south of the Zambezi on the east, and of the Quanza 

 on the west. This has largely increased the number of South- 

 African birds given in Layard's original work and raised it 

 to no less than 771 species. 



