254 THE ETHIOPIAN REGION. [CHAP. 



V. Ungulata (cont.). 

 3. HYRACOIDEA\ 



PROCAVIID/E. I Range into Syria. 

 Procavia. 



VL Effbdientia. Ethiopian and Oriental. 



ORYCTEROPODIDJS. Fossil in French Oligocene. 



Orycteropus. Fossil in Pliocene of Samos and Persia. 



Among groups other than mammals, attention may be directed 

 to the remarkable difference between the birds of 

 Ethiopia and those of Madagascar. On this point 

 Dr Blanford 1 writes that "the most characteristic African families, 

 such as plantain-eaters (Musophagidce), colies (Collidce), and wood- 

 hoopoes (Irrisoridce), barbets, hornbills, secretary-birds (Serpen- 

 tarius], and a number of genera, such as Lamprotornis (glossy 

 starlings), Buphaga (ox-peckers), Laniarius, and Telephonus, that 

 are the common and familiar birds of every part of Africa south of 

 the Sahara, are entirely wanting in the Mascarene Islands, in- 

 cluding the Seychelles, Mauritius, etc., while no fewer than four 

 peculiar families and a number of genera confined to the archi- 

 pelago replace them. Amongst the Mascarene birds, too, are 

 found several representatives of Oriental genera, or genera closely 

 allied to Oriental types, and without any near Ethiopian relations. 

 Foremost among these are certain bulbuls, forming the genera 

 Ixocincla and Tylas, the former composed of species which have 

 been usually referred to the typically Oriental genus Hypsipetes, 

 and the latter nearly affined. In fact, as was shown by Geoffrey 

 St Hilaire, and as Hartlaub has since pointed out, there is in the 

 Mascarene avifauna a more marked connexion with Indian than 

 with Ethiopian types. In the Seychelles, especially, out of the 

 seven Passerine genera represented by peculiar species, three, 

 Nectarinia, Zosterops, and Tchitrea, are Indian and African, one, 

 Foudia, is Ethiopian, but not Indian, and two, Copsychns and 

 Hypsipetes, or Ixocincla, are Indian but not African." 



All this is confirmatory, not only of the right of Madagascar 

 and the Mascarenes to form a region by themselves, but likewise 



1 Appendix, No. 8, p. 89. In this quotation the English or Latin names 

 have in some cases been added to the original. 



