DISTRIBUTION^ OF JAYS. 25 



the line of the Ohio River), which but very few members of the 

 family have been able to surmount. According to Tryon, only one 

 species of the family, Goniobasis sordida, is positively known to be 

 common to the region on both sides of that great stream.' 



Probably no group of animals, as Mr. Wallace well observes, 

 illustrates in a more striking manner the extreme features of specific 

 distribution than the true jays, birds of the genus G-arrulus. About 

 fourteen species are recognised by ornithologists, whose combined 

 domain embraces the entire east and west extent of the continent of 

 Eurasia, from the Bay of Biscay to the Sea of Okhotsk, and also in- 

 cludes the continental British Isles on the west, and the Japanese 

 group on the east. Most of these species occupy independent areas 

 of their own, or areas which but barely overlap on their contiguous 

 borders. Thus, the common jay (G-arrulus glandarius) inhabits the 

 greater portion of the semi-continent of Europe, ranging from the 

 Barbary States in Africa northward to about the sixty-fourth paral- 

 lel of latitude (in Scandinavia and Russia), and east to the Ural 

 Mountains. Along its southern border it meets the Algerian jay (G. 

 cervicalis), a distinctly-marked species, and one having but a very 

 limited range. On the southeast, again, its confines meet those of 

 the black-headed jay (G. Krynicki), which occupies a somewhat cir- 

 cular district extending some distance on all sides of the Black Sea. 

 Contiguous with this last is the region inhabited by the Syrian jay 

 (G. atricapillus), a species very closely allied to the preceding, 

 whose domain extends through Syria, Palestine, and Southern 

 Persia. North of this we have the limited area occupied by the 

 Persian jay (G. hyrcanus), which has thus far been found only on 

 the Elbruz Mountains. In an almost direct line east of this region, 

 but separated from it by a considerable area where no jays are to be 

 met with, we pass consecutively over the haunts of the black- 

 throated jay (G. lanceolatus), from the Northwestern Himalayas, the 

 Himalayan jay (G. bispecularis), from the Himalaya Mountains to 

 the eastward of Cashmere, the Chinese jay (G. Sinensis), from South 

 and Central China (and, occasionally, Japan), and the Formosan jay 

 (G. Taivanus). The home of the Burmese jay (G. leucotis) adjoins 

 that of the Himalayan jay on the southeast. North of the belt 

 occupied by the species of southern jay we have a vast region 

 — the desert area of Central Asia, with Thibet, Turkestan, Mon- 

 golia, and Gobi — throughout the greater part of which no jays 



