136 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE ORNITHOLOGY OF INDIA. 



than from west, and north-west. But colonization in no ordi- 

 nary sense can explain the facts. Sumatra, only 80 miles distant 

 from the Great Nieobar, and itself the first link of a great chain 

 running' down almost unbroken to the Papuan sub-region, 

 Sumatra, as Davison's hurried visit shows (vide Stray Feathers, 

 1873, p. 441, et seq.), teems right up to Acheen Head with 

 species quite unknown to the Nieobars, and seems only to have 

 passed on to these latter, one species Lalage terat, and to have 

 afforded a passage to JEsacus magnirostris, Goisakius melanolophus, 

 and perhaps one or two others, and a Megapod, which has 

 departed from its type, whatever that was, and assumed a 

 distinct specific form. 



Surely it is passing strange, this long line of islands, so close 

 comparatively to Pegu, Tenasserim, and the northern portion of 

 the Malayan Peninsular, abutting, it might almost be said, on 

 Arakan on the north and Sumatra on the south, and yet taking 

 scarcely one-third of its ornis from all these together, and the 

 remainder from the, comparatively so far distant, Indian sub- 

 region. 



How can we consider these islands as other than an outlying 

 strip of the Indian region proper, and the Indo-Burman, Indo- 

 Malayau, and Archipelagian forms, as intruders on the original 

 Avifauna ? 



Yet that it must have been very long since these islands 

 formed an integral part of the Indian region is proved by the 

 very large proportion of local species und races, forms that could 

 probably only have been differentiated under greatly changed 

 conditions of existence prevailing for a very lengthened period. 



Perhaps, however, I am putting the case for the Indian origin 

 of the ornis too strongly. It is not sufficient merely to deter- 

 mine what proportion of Indian species and genera are com- 

 prised in the Avifauna, we must also consider what well 

 marked widely distributed Indian genera are tmrepresented 

 in this. 



Truly some of the lacunas are most unaccountable. I do not 

 think much of the absence of vultures, because these could 

 scarcely exist, where mammals of any size, whether wild or 

 domesticated, are all hut entirely wanting, and moreover, the 

 same climatic influences, that have prevented the extension of 

 vultures into the Indo-Malayan region, would have led to 

 their disappearance, if they ever existed there, from these islands, 

 but the entire absence of Hypotriorchis, Tinnunculus, Lophos- 

 piza, Neopus, Ualiastur, Mihus, JElanus, JPemis, Baza. Poiiornis, 

 genera more or less common to the Indian, Indo-Burmese, Indo- 



