198 THE BIRDS OF SIKHIM. 



LIST OF SIKHIM BIRDS, 



SHOWING THBIB 



GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION. 



Although the avifauna of Sikhim is one of tl^e richest in the world, 

 No local lists pub- and the country itself is a well-defined geographical 

 lished. unit, it is remarkable that no general list of Sikhim 



bii-ds has hitherto been published. 



The fauna has been very fully explored and collected by Hodgson,^ 

 The ayifavina well Hooker," Jerdon,^ W. T. Blanford,* Elwes,* Mandelli,^ 

 collected, but further Gammie,^ Brooks,^ and others ; but the records, 

 notes needed. with the exception of those of Jerdon and Blanford, 



consist mainly of detached notes on isolated species. Jerdon's general 

 and systematic observations, which were confined to Darjeeling and 

 the adjoining parts of British Sikhun,' were largely complemented by 

 Blanford's account of his three months' tour in 1870 in Independent 

 Sikhim, chiefly in the Alpine and Sub-alpine areas. And it is the 

 writings of these two authorities, supplemented by the " Occasional 

 Notes" from Sikhim, by Mr. Gammie in Stray Feathers, which afford 

 most of the existing information on the extent and geogi'aphical dis- 

 tribution of Sikhun bnds. Hodgson's British Museum Catalogue of 

 his Sikhim skins gives practically no details of the habitats. And in 

 regard to the necessity for further information Mr. Blanford has 

 recently written,* "We require a large amount of additional informa- 

 tion as to the range in height of Sikhim birds. Largely as they have 

 been collected, there is, I think, less known about them on the whole 

 than about the less numerous forms of the North- Western Himalayas." 



' Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, The Bengal Sporting Magazine, Calcutta Jour, 

 of Natural Hist., ifc. 



- Himalayan Journals, I and II, London, 1854. 



3 The Birds of India, Calc, 1862. 



■* Journal Asiatic Society, Bengal, XLI, part ii (1872), page 30, et seq. 



* Stray Feathers, Calcutta, 1873, et seq. 



^ Stray Feathers, VIII, page 464. 



■ Dr. Jerdon spent a year at Darjeeling about 1B67. 



3 Inepist. 1892. 



