ii A REVISED LIST OF THE BIRDS OF TENASSERIM. 



Ever since then the party has been working there ; Davison 

 himself at times visiting and collecting in the Malay Peninsula 

 ■with one or two assistants, during the height of monsoon, or 

 joining me for a brief period at Simla, to go through the season's 

 work. 



During this period some 8,000* specimens have been collected, 

 and I have received about 500 more collected within the 

 province by Dr. Armstrong, Captain Bingham, Mr. A. L. 

 Hough, and others. 



But Tenasserim, even as it stood when we commenced work, 

 bounded on the north by the Pah-choung or frog creek, and on the 

 south by the Pakchan, was 625 miles in length, and over 70 miles 

 in width in many parts — a province of the most varied physical 

 configuration, embracing every conceivable variety of tropical 

 and sub-tropical vegetation from the dismal mangrove swamps 

 of the coast to the gloomy pine forests of the loftiest mountains — 

 a province, broken up by innumerable rivers and interminable 

 creeks, traversed in all directions by complex ranges of lower 

 and higher hills — a province in which an hour's walk may 

 take you from the shimmeriug velvet of the rice plains to the 

 inaccessible precipices of the limestone hills, from the feathery 

 sea of the bamboo jungle to the still recesses of the primeval 

 evergreen forests — a province, vast portions of which were not 

 only as yet unvisited by any European, but which pathless and 

 uninhabited it seemed impossible to visit — a province teeming 

 almost without parallel with wild fruit and flowers and insect 

 life, and with an avifauna worthy of this glorious profusion, 

 and this marvellous diversity of physical surroundings. 



But since we commenced work, administrative exigencies 

 have led to the still further extension northwards of this large 

 province by the incorporation of the district of Tonghoo and 

 the Karendoo and Karennee, the homes of the red and white 

 Karens respectively. 



Clearly, no one man, however gifted, could, within any reason- 

 able period of time, achieve anything like an exhaustive ex- 

 ploration, even ornithologically, of this enormous and difficult 

 tract. From the Pah-choung to the Pakchan, Davison has 

 completed a sort of preliminary reconnaissance (impaired alas 

 by some sad breaks), sufficient to give us some general idea of 

 the avifauna of these portions of the province and its distribu- 

 tion, while Lieutenant Wardlaw Ramsay and Major Lloyd's 

 collections in Tonghoo and the Karen country, little as we have 



* Since this was in typo Davison has brought up about 600 more specimens chiefly 

 collected in the Tavoy district. These will be found referred to in Appendix I, 

 Addenda et Corrigenda, 



