632 MR. W. T. BLANFOIID ON THE FAUNA OF TIBET. [June 20, 



pian and Malay regions with India and Leniuria into one great 

 region; and I still hold that the hills of Southern India with the 

 Malabar coast and Southern Ceylon form a province of the Malay 

 region, whilst the greater portion of the Indian peninsula is African 

 in its affinities *. This subject, however, is too large for discussion 

 in the present note, the principal object of which is to point out a 

 correction which is, I think, of some importance, with regard to 

 the fauna of Tibet. This is, by v. Pelzelu, included in the Malay 

 region : he comprises the typical Tibetan genera such as Panthalops 

 and Poiphagus in his list of Malay forms ; and on the map accom- 

 panying the paper on the Malay mammal-fauna the Kuenluen range 

 is shown as the northern limit of the region. 



The fauna of the Tibetan plateau has, in reality, no Malay affinities ; 

 but the cause of the misunderstanding is simple. The two natural- 

 ists to whose writings one naturally turns for information about 

 Tibetan animals, are Mr. Hodgson and Pere David ; and both are 

 eminently misleading, since both collected simultaneously specimens 

 from two faunas which have in fact scarcely a generic type in com- 

 mon — the Himalayan, which is quite correctly classed by v. Pelzelu 

 as a subdivision of the Malay region, and the Tibetan, which is 

 part of Blyth's Mongolian province belonging to the Boreal or 

 Palaearctic region. The former possessess a very rich fauna with 

 numerous peculiar types ; the latter is poor in species, though indi- 

 viduals are locally numerous. It is consequently not surprising that 

 the few members of the Tibetan fauna which show peculiarity should 

 be ignored amongst the vast bulk of Himalayan genera, and that 

 Tibet should be assigned to the Malay region. 



On the southern slopes of the Himalayas there is everywhere, 

 until it has been cleared, luxuriant forest up to at least 12,000 feet 

 above the sea, inhabited by a fauna which extends without any 

 great change of generic forms, throughout the Malay peninsula and 

 into the hill-tracts of some at least of the Malay islands f. Imme- 

 diately \ north of the main Himalayan range, a cold, barren, and 

 desert region of mountains and plateaux extends, swept by winds 

 from which all moisture has been drained by the high mountain- 

 chains on all sides. To this tract not one of the forest-haunting 

 inhabitants of the Himalayas ever penetrates, although many of 

 them extend far into the mountains along the damp and richly 

 wooded valleys of rivers. The fauna of these Tibetan plateaux is 

 essentially Boreal, Alpine and even Arctic types prevailing, the 

 country having in many parts a climate scarcely equalled elsewhere 

 for intensity of cold out of the Arctic regions. This high barren 

 tableland extends from Afghanistan to Yunan ; it comprises the 

 drainage-areas of the Upper Indus and the Sanpii, and is bounded 

 on the north in its western portion by the Kuenluen range ; but it is 

 less denned and its boundaries less accurately known to the eastward, 



* J. A. S. B. 1870, vol. xxxix. pt. 2. p. 336. 

 t Elwes, P. Z. S. 1873, p. 615. 



I How sudden the change is, in places, is admirably described in Hooker's 

 ; Himalayan Journals,' vol. ii. p. 158. 



