* 
352 BIRDS OF PALESTINE AND PANAMA COMPARED. 
edge has not approached completeness, until the publication — 
of the late researches of Rev. H. B. Tristram. m 
Palestine, with its exceeding diversity of surface, its Cam | 
mel and Tabor, its Lebanon and Bashan, its plains, its deep 
quiet valleys, its rugged canõns and lake shores, presents 
scenes fitted for the habitation of all the forms where adapti- — 
tion to nature must play a part; yet how different the inhabi- 
tants from those of similar situations in our own land, equally 
given to man for his habitation and place of development! 
Tristram noticed 322 species of birds within the rang? 
of the ancient territory. Of these, 230 were land, and 9? 
water birds, ¿.e. Natatores and the wading Cursores. Of — 
the 230, seventy-nine are common to the British Islands, 
and thirty-six of them are found in China, but a small pro- 
portion extending their range to both these extremes. Of 
the water birds, which are always more widely distributed, 
fifty-five of the ninety-two are British, and fifty-seven Chi- : 
nese. Twenty-seven appear to be confined to Palestine a | 
to the immediately adjacent country ; the largest of these * : 
a crow. | 
Taking the 230 land birds at a glance, we find the utter 
absence of so many of the well-known forms that enliven of 
grounds and forests. ‘The absence of Tanagride (w 
warblers” ) and Icteridæ (“black- and hanging-bird” type) d 
changes the aspect of the bird-fauna at once. What have W® 
here, then, of nine-quilled Oscines to enliven the meado¥® : 
like our swarms of blackbirds, or fill the tree-tops and ie | 
ets with flutter like our wood-warblers? © Nothing: SEM 
twenty-four species of finches, Fringillide, will but ps 
our own, though the genera are all different but four, * 
they: the most weakly represented by species. ie the 
look to the higher series, the ten-quilled song-birds, aT 
missing rank and file. While a much larger vein 
Eastern United States possesses fifty species of these 
the little Palestine has already furnished a list © | ag 
dred and twenty-eight. First, of the crows whic k 

