NA TURE 



513 



THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, ii 



THE FA UNA OF BRITISH INDIA. 



The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma. 

 " Mammalia." By W. T. Blanford, F.R.S. Part I. 

 Published under the authority of the Secretary of 

 State for India in Council. (London : Taylor and 

 Francis, 1888.) 



AMONG the various methods which may be adopted 

 in the composition of zoological monographs, the 

 two most prevalent are those in which either the natural 

 group or the geographical region is taken as the basis. 

 A particular section of the animal kingdom may be 

 selected, and the structure, history, affinities, varieties, 

 and distribution of its members worked out, or a parti- 

 cular region of the earth's surface may be taken, and the 

 whole of its varied inhabitants described. 



Monographs of groups and of fauna both have their 

 value, and the success obtained in undertaking one or 

 the other will depend much upon the special facilities of 

 the investigator. From a strictly scientific point of view 

 the former generally produce the best result. There is 

 more cohesion, or naturalness, so to speak, in such a 

 group, whether genus, family, or order ; and anyone 

 seriously endeavouring to trace the modifications of its 

 members through all known forms, especially if the 

 extinct can be united with the existing, has a better 

 chance of getting a complete comprehension of the rela- 

 tions of all the parts of his subject than one who has to 

 deal with the disjointed fragments of a large number of 

 groups, brought by various circumstances together upon 

 one part of the earth's surface — work, moreover, in many 

 parts of which he must necessarily be largely dependent 

 upon the labours of others. 



On the other hand, for practical convenience, faunistic 

 works are in greater demand than monographs on groups, 

 especially if they treat of regions so important to the 

 educated and civilized world as British India. We may 

 even, in such a case, allow the weight of social and 

 political rather than purely scientific boundaries in 

 defining the range of the territory comprehended in the 

 work. There is a very natural and laudable desire on 

 the part of the large and continually increasing number 

 of residents and travellers in our Indian Empire to 

 obtain some definite knowledge of the varied and inter- 

 esting forms of animal life by which they are surrounded, 

 and it is gratifying to see that the Government of that 

 great dependency has recognized its responsibility in this 

 matter, and has given its authority to the preparation 

 of a series of descriptive manuals on Indian zoology. 

 The limits adopted for the fauna are those of the 

 dependencies of India, with the addition of Ceylon, 

 which, although British, is not under the Indian Govern- 

 ment. Within the limits thus defined are comprised all 

 India proper and the Himalayas, the Punjab, Sind, Balu- 

 chistan, all the Kashmir territories, with Gilgit, Ladak ? 

 &c, Nepal, Sikhim, Bhutan, and other Cis-Himalayan 

 States, Assam, the countries between Assam and Burma, 

 such as 'the Khdsi and Naga Hills and Manipur, the 

 Vol. xxxviii.— No. 987. 



whole of Burma, with Karennee and Tenasserim, and the 

 Mergui Archipelago, and, lastly, the Andaman and the 

 Nicobar Islands. Afghanistan, Kashgaria, Tibet, Yunnan, 

 Siam, and the Malay Peninsula south of Tenasserim are 

 excluded. A few- States, such as Nepal and Bhutan, at 

 present not accessible to Europeans, are comprised, 

 because it would be difficult to leave them out : scarcely 

 an animal occurs in either not found also in British 

 territories or in protected States such as Sikhim. 



For the present it is proposed to restrict the publication 

 to the Vertebrata, and to complete the work in seven 

 volumes of about 500 pages each. One of these volumes 

 will contain the Mammals, three will be required for the 

 Birds, one for the Reptiles and Batrachians, and two for 

 the Fishes. The authorship of the volumes on Fishes has 

 been undertaken by Mr. F. Day, CLE. ; t'ie Reptilia and 

 Batrachia will be described by Mr. G. A. Boulenger ; 

 whilst the Birds will, it is hoped, be taken in hand by Mr. 

 E. W. Oates, author of the " Birds of British India." The 

 editorship of the whole has been intrusted to Mr. W. T. 

 Blanford, F.R.S., than whom few men could be found 

 better qualified for such an undertaking. Long-continued 

 employment in connection with the Geological Survey of 

 India has made him familiar with the natural features of 

 every part of the country ; his qualifications as a field 

 naturalist have been abundantly displayed in the published 

 results of his scientific excursions to Persia and Abyssinia ; 

 and he has had recently, during several years' residence in 

 London, ample opportunity of examining and comparing 

 all that bears upon the subject, which is gathered together 

 or recorded in our national collections and libraries at 

 home. 



Mr. Blanford has himself undertaken the volume 

 describing the Mammals, and has now given us the first 

 part as an instalment, consisting of 250 pages, and con- 

 taining the orders Primates, Carnivora, and Insectivora. 

 Notwithstanding the great advance that this work shows 

 over that of Jerdon, published twenty-one years ago, 

 especially in scientific method, critical discrimination of 

 specific distinctions, and attention to the rules of nomen- 

 clature, in all of which it leaves nothing to be desired, it 

 is still interesting to observe how much remains to be 

 done, even in such a comparatively well-worn field as the 

 Mammals of India, and how insufficient even our largest 

 collections still are for perfecting such a work. For 

 instance, the materials for a critical and exhaustive 

 examination of the interesting genus of monkeys, Semno- 

 pithecus, are obviously wanting at present. Fourteen 

 species of the genus are assigned by the author to British 

 India, but doubts are expressed as to the real distinction 

 of several of them, the characters of which are taken from 

 an extremely limited number of examples, and it is stated 

 that very little is known of their breeding habits and life- 

 history in general. The variations, habits, and geo- 

 graphical distribution of the smaller Felidce and Viverrid^e 

 offer an interesting field for future investigators, though 

 Mr. Blanford has done much to clear away the confusion 

 in which the synonymy of these groups had been 

 involved by previous and less careful and conscientious 

 workers. The account of the Insectivora has been 

 derived largely from Mr. Dobson's excellent monograph 

 of that order, the concluding still unpublished part of 



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