264 W. T. Blanford's Census of the Indian Land Fauna. [No. 4, 



(Arakan, Pegu, Tenasserim) are comprised within our limits, but not Inde- 

 pendent Burmah. On the mainland the frontier chosen does not run south 

 beyond the end of Tenasserim, the Straits Settlements being excluded ; but 

 the fauna of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands is added to that of British 

 Burma, of which they form dependencies. 



It would be easy to find reasons for modifying various portions of 

 the boundaries chosen, but they are believed to coincide as nearly as possi- 

 ble with the "red line" that marks the limit of British power. The 

 most questionable addition of the whole is perhaps Ceylon, for this island, 

 though entirely British, is in no sense a dependency of British India. But 

 Ceylon is included for zoological reasons : its fauna differs very little indeed 

 from that of Southern India, and the most important and typically Indian 

 portion of the fauna would be imperfect were the animals of the island 

 omitted. 



The area thus circumscribed includes portions of two great zoological 

 regions, the Oriental and the Palsearctic. To the latter belong northern 

 Kashmir and part of Baluchistan together with all the Himalayas above 

 an elevation varying from about 7000 to about 10,000 feet in different 

 parts of the range ; the former comprises the remainder of the area. The 

 comparatively small tract of the Palsearctic region includes parts of at least 

 two separable subregions of the higher Himalayas and portions of the Cen- 

 tral Asiatic plateau, whilst in the Oriental part of the area the whole of 

 two of Mr. Wallace's subregions* and portions of the other two are in- 

 cluded. 



The following are the numbers of species known, so far as I have 

 been able to determine them. I repeat that whilst the number of Verte- 

 brate species is, I believe, a fair approximation to the real number inhabit- 

 ing the country, the Invertebrates are, as a rule, much less accurately known, 

 and that whilst in the Vertebrata both land and marine forms are included, 

 amongst the Invertebrata, the land and freshwater species alone are enumer- 

 ated. 



The data for the Mammals are various. I have collated the various 

 works by Jerdon, Blyth, Dobson, Anderson, and others, and as nearly as I 

 can estimate the following species are known : — 



quadrumafa, ,. 23 



Lemures, 3 



Chiroptera, 80 



Insectivora, 55 



Carnivora, 75 



* It must be understood that Mr. Wallace's subdivisions are open to a considera- 

 ble revision, and, as I sbewed some years since, the boundaries of his Indian and 

 Ceylonese subregions at all events are not correct. 



