204 
ZOOLOGICAL GEOGRAPHY 
[part hi 
one to East Africa, while twenty-seven are peculiar to Palestine. 
It is evident therefore that an unusual number of East African 
birds have extended their range to this congenial district, but 
most of these are desert species and hardly true Ethiopians, 
and do not much interfere with the general Palsearctic character 
of the whole assemblage. As an illustration of how wide-spread 
are many of the Palaearctic forms, we may add, that seventy- 
nine species of land birds and fifty-five of water birds, are com- 
mon to Palestine and Britain. The Oriental and Ethiopian 
genera Pycnonotus and Nectarinca are found here, while Bessornis 
and Dromolcea are characteristically Ethiopian. Almost all the 
other genera are Palajarctic. 
Persia is another remote region generally associated with the 
idea of Oriental and almost tropical forms, but which yet undoubt- 
edly belongs to the Palaearctic region. Mr. B1 an ford’s recent 
collections in this country, with other interesting information, is 
summarised in Mr. El wes’s paper on the “ Geographical Distri- 
bution of Asiatic Birds ” ( Proc . Zool. Soc. 1873, p. 647). No less 
than 127 species are found also in Europe, and thirty-seven 
others belong to European genera; seven are allied to birds of 
Central Asia or Siberia, and fifteen to those of North-East Africa, 
while only three are purely of Indian affinities. This shows a 
preponderance of nearly nine-tenths of Palaearctic forms, which 
is fully as much as can be expected in any country near the 
limits of a great region. 
Reptiles and Amphibia . — The climatal conditions being here 
more favourable to these groups, and the genera being often of 
limited range, we find some peculiar, and several very interesting 
forms. Phinechis , a genus of Colubrine snakes, is found only in 
South Europe ; Trogonophis , one of the Amphisbaeni ans — 
curious snake-like lizards — is known only from North Africa ; 
Psammosaurus , belonging to the water lizards (Yaranidfe) is 
found in North Africa and North-West India ; Psammodromus, 
a genus of Lacertidse, is peculiar to South Europe ; Hyalosawrus , 
belonging to the family Zonuridse, is a lizard of especial in- 
terest, as it inhabits North Africa while its nearest ally is the 
Ophisaurus or “ glass snake ” of North America; the family of 
