a 1878.] Province of the United States. 513 
The first attempt to divide the United States as a whole into 
zoölogical provinces was in 1859, by Dr. LeConte, in his 
- “ Coleoptera of Kansas and Eastern New Mexico (Smithsonian 
Contributions, 1859).” He divided the Coleopterous fauna of the 
United States into three great zoölogical districts, distinguished 
each by numerous peculiar genera and species, which, with but 
few exceptions, do not extend into the contiguous districts. He 
named them the Eastern, Central and Western divisions; so that 
to him is due the credit of first distinguishing the Central 
province. 
In 1866, Prof. Baird, from a kadr of the avifauna of the 
United States, concluded that “the ornithological provinces 
` of North America consist of two great divisions of nearly equal 
size in the United States, meeting in the vicinity of the tooth 
meridian, the western half divisible again into two, more closely 
related to each other than to the eastern, though each has special 
characters. These three sections form three great provinces to 
be known as the western, middle and eastern; or those of the 
Pacific slope; of the great basin, the Rocky mountains and the 
adjacent plains; and of the fertile plains and region generally, 
east of the Missouri.” 
In 1871, Mr. J. A. Allen? divided the avifauna of the United 
States into two provinces, the eastern and western, the latter em- 
bracing the Pacific coast. (Since this paper was read Mr. Allen’s 
late essay has appeared, in which he adopts Prof. Baird’s division 
into three provinces. The geographical distribution of the 
mammalia, etc. Bulletin of Hayden’s U. S. Geographical and 
Geological Survey of the Territories, May 3, 1878). 
-In 1873,3 Mr. W. G. Binney published a map of the distribution 
of our land shells, dividing the molluscan fauna into the Eastern, 
Central and Pacific provinces. 
In 1875, Prof. E. D. Cope in his check list of North American 
Batrachia and Reptilia divided the Nearctic realm of Sclater into 
the Austroriparian, Eastern, Central, Pacific, Sonoran and Lower 
Californian regions. He remarks that “the Pacific region is nearly 
related to the Central, and, as it consists of only the narrow dis- 
trict west of the Sierra Nevada, might be regarded as a sub-divi- 
1 American Journal of Science and Arts, January and March, 1866. 
* Bulletin of the Museum of Com mp. Zoology, kaf 1871. 
_* Catalogue of the Terrestrial Molluscs of North America. 
* Bulletin U. S. Nat. Mus., Washington, 1875. Bull. Mus. Comp. dou. 1873. 
