chap, xii.] THE ORIENTAL REGION. 321 



among Brenthidre ; with an immense number and variety of 

 Anthotribidse, Heteromera, Malacoderma, and Phytophaga. 



The Oriental Sub-regions. 



The four sub-regions into which we have divided the Oriental 

 region, are very unequal in extent, and perhaps more so in 

 productiveness, but they each have well-marked special features, 

 and serve well to exhibit the main zoological characteristics of 

 the region. As they are all tolerably well defined and their 

 faunas comparatively well-known, their characteristics will be 

 given with rather more than usual detail. 



7". Hindostan, or Indian Sub-region. 



This includes the whole peninsula of India from the foot of the 

 Himalayas on the north to somewhere near Seringapatam on the 

 south, the boundary of the Ceylonese sub-region being unsettled. 

 The deltas of the Ganges and Brahmaputra mark its eastern 

 limits, and it probably reaches to about Cashmere in the north- 

 west, and perhaps to the valley of the Indus further south ; but 

 the great desert tract to the east of the Indus forms a transition 

 to the south Palaearctic sub-region. Perhaps on the whole the 

 Indus may be taken as a convenient boundary. Many Indian 

 naturalists, especially Mr. Blyth and Mr. Blanford, are impressed 

 with the relations of the greater part of this sub-region to the 

 Ethiopian region, and have proposed to divide it into several 

 zoological districts dependent on differences of climate and vege- 

 tation, and characterized by possessing faunas more or less allied 

 either to the Himalayan or the Ethiopian type. But these sub- 

 divisions appear far too complex to be useful to the general stu- 

 dent, and even were they proved to be natural, would be beyond 

 the scope of this work. I agree, however, with Mr. Elwes in 

 thinking that they really belong to local rather than to geo- 

 graphical distribution, and confound " station " with " habitat." 

 Wherever there is a marked diversity of surface and vegetation 

 the productions of a country will correspondingly differ; the 

 groups peculiar to forests, for example, will be absent from open 



