Rev. H. B. Tristram on the Ornithology of Palestine. 69 



Wady el Arish, and is abruptly brought to a point at Ras 

 Mohammed, at the bifurcation of the Dead Sea. 



Broken more or less throughout its whole course, this con- 

 tinuation of the Lebanon is the platform on which all the great 

 historical cities of Palestine rest, and divides the watershed of 

 the Mediterranean and the Jordan and Dead Sea valley. The 

 eastern range, that of the Antilibanus, after culminating in 

 Jebel es Sheik (the ancient Hermon) at a height of nearly 10,000 

 feet, runs southwards with much less irregularity, until it termi- 

 nates at the Gulf of Akabah in the peak of Jebel el Ashab. In 

 its course it is known as the table-land of Bashan, the mountains 

 of Gilead and Ajalon, the hills of Moab, and the fine range of 

 Wady Mousaor Petra. This range, like the western, forms the 

 separation of a watershed through its whole length, the westward 

 face draining into the Jordan, the Dead Sea, and the Arabah, 

 while the eastern watershed fertilizes the Belka and the Hauran, 

 and is lost in sebkhas or salt-lakes and marshes in the Arabian 

 Desert. None of its drainage reaches the Red Sea or the Eu- 

 phrates. 



In this desert we have, as in the Sahara of North Africa, an 

 illustration of the fact that a desert expanse forms a barrier 

 against the distribution of a fauna, more impassable than an area 

 of water of even equal extent. As it is the Sahara, and not the 

 Mediterranean, which separates the faunas of Europe and Africa, 

 so it would seem to be the Desert of Arabia, and not the Persian 

 or Red Sea Gulfs, which marks the line between the Indian, 

 Ethiopian, and Palsearctic circles of distribution, all of which, 

 however, impinge in this region on one another's boundaries 

 and overlap each other. 



Yet, were it not for one unique and unparalleled phenomenon 

 in its physical geography, we should find the avifauna of Pales- 

 tine similar in character to that of the Barbary States — essentially 

 of the Mediterranean basin, but with some few stragglers from 

 eastern Africa, whose arrival had been facilitated by the lay of 

 the Red Sea, and with a still more scanty number of stragglers 

 across the eastern desert from the Euphrates valley. But the 

 phenomenon of the existence of the Ghor, or deep fissure of 

 the Jordan valley, disturbs these proportions. The little district 



