14 THF NATURAL HISTORY OF CHINA 



in the country. The subject is too vast. Besides it would 

 be superfluous for there are numerous excellent lists of such 

 birds extant, not) to mention expansive works such as Gould's 

 "Birds of Asia." The museum of this society contains a 

 very fine collection of Chinese birds, and anyone wishing 

 to take up the subject will find that the specimens have all 

 been identified and labelled. 



It has already been stated that China is the headquarters 

 of the pheasant family, and if any one point more than 

 another characterizes the avi-fauna of the country it is this. 

 Perhaps another characteristic that may be mentioned here 

 is the number and variety of the timeline birds — babblers, 

 laughing thrushes, and the like — that occur. In the southern 

 provinces we have such remarkable birds as the pheasant- 

 cuckoos, crow-tits and trogons, nor should we neglect to 

 mention the numerous and beautiful fly-catchers that inhabit 

 this part of the earth. 



The birds of North-east China, Corea, and Manchuria 

 are remarkably similar to those of Europe and the British 

 Isles, and a study of the subject reveals the fact that closely 

 related forms, each grading into the next, occur all the way 

 from Westerm Europe through Siberia to these easterly 

 regions. 



Reptiles. 



In dealing with the reptiles and amphibians, or batra- 

 chians, of the country we are confronted with a rather 

 remarkable fact. North of the Yangtse Valley these forms 

 of animal life are very poorly represented, if not in numbers 

 of individuals at least in variety of species, while south of it 

 is there is a great abundance of both. The explanation is 

 not far to seek, and it lies in the climatic conditions to be 

 encountered in the two areas. These cold-blooded verte- 

 brates are a weak remnant of great reptiles that lived in 

 the days when the earth was much warmer than it is 

 to-day, when the climate was far more humid and vegetation 

 infinitely more luxurious and prevalent. Life for great 

 saurians was comparatively easy, and so they did not 

 evolve any means of protecting themselves against the less 

 favourable conditions that followed the Carboniferous and 

 Cretaceous periods of the earth's history. Their descendants 

 survived, but, with the exception of the crocodiles and 

 alligators, only as very small replicas of the great monsters 

 that once swarmed. And these survivers can no more with- 

 stand severe climatic conditions, than could their ancestors. 

 Only a comparatively few reptiles have been able to adapt 



