INTRODUCTION. xli 



from its moister climate, wants the parching hot winds of 

 those provinces and of the North West. 



Malabar, including the Neilgherries, possesses several 

 species of birds unknown in other parts of India, some of 

 them, but not all, also found in Ceylon. The Carnatic, the 

 Table-land of Southern India, and Central India, have 

 only three or four species found nowhere else. Bengal 

 has several, not found in the other districts, but all these 

 are common to it and the countries to the eastward. 

 The North-west provinces, and the Punjab, have likewise 

 several forms, not found in other parts of India, but 

 most of these are not peculiar to that region, but extend 

 into the neighbouring Provinces of Asia. The Himalayas 

 have a double Fauna, unknown in the plains : the one is 

 common to these mountains, and to the hilly regions of 

 Assam and Burmah ; and the other, in the higher portions 

 of the range, is common to them with Tibet and Northern 

 Asia. Many species of Birds, however, have, hitherto, 

 been found nowhere else.* 



Major Franklin was the first writer who published an 

 Ornithological Fauna of part of India (Proc, Zool. Soc, 

 1831) ; and he was very shortly followed by Tickell, in a List 

 of the Birds of Borabhum and Dholbum (Journal, Asiat. 

 Society, 1833), and by Colonel Sykes with his Cata- 

 logue of the Birds of the Bombay Deccan (Proc. Zool. 

 Soc, 1832). 



Mr. Hodgson, for many years our accomplished Resi- 

 dent at the Court of Nepal, has added very largely to our 

 knowledge of the Birds of the Himalayas, few of which 

 escaped his zealous researches. His most valuable papers 



* In the 2nd volume will be given a somewhat more extended view of the 

 geographic distribution of the Birds of India, accompanied with Tables, and this 

 will be paged separately, su as to be bound up with either volume. 



/ 



