President's Address. 
51 
1879.] 
by one busily engaged in official duties. Collections on the scale of Mr. 
Hume’s have never been made in India before, in any branch of the animal 
kingdom, and much time and care are devoted to the determination and 
description of the large series of skins collected. Indeed Mr. Hume may 
fairly claim to have founded a school of ornithology in India, and the great 
attention now given to one of the most interesting classes in the animal 
kingdom, by training observers, has no small effect in leading to a study of 
other branches of zoology, less attractive perhaps at first, but of equal 
scientific importance. 
Of ‘ Stray Feathers’, one whole volume and part of a second have ap¬ 
peared during the past year, or more than has ever previously been publish¬ 
ed within the same period. The completed volume is entirely filled with a list 
of the Birds of Tenasserim, and is, in all respects, a great addition to our 
knowledge of one of the richest, though hitherto the least known, of the terri¬ 
tories belonging to the Indian Government, and a country of singular zoolo¬ 
gical interest for two reasons, firstly, because few tracts on the earth’s 
surface have been less changed by the hand of man, and secondly, because 
within the limits of the province there is one of those dividing lines between 
the faunas of different zoological subregions or provinces, the investigation 
of which is so essential in order to determine the history and causes of 
geographical distribution. The value of Mr. Hume’s work may be partly 
inferred from the circumstance that his assistant and coadjutor Mr. 
Davison has collected no less than between 8000 and 9000 specimens of 
birds in the Tenasserim provinces, and that these and about 500 specimens 
received from other collectors represent 580 species out of the 669 be¬ 
lieved, on good authority, to occur within the province. Mi. Blyth s list of 
the birds of all Burma, published in the Society’s Journal for 1875, contain¬ 
ed but 660 species, and of these at least 100 have been found in Pegu or 
Arakan, but not in Tenasserim, whilst 41 are said by Mr. Hume to be either 
not Burmese or else not distinct specific forms, so that fully 150 birds have 
been added to the avifauna of Tenasserim, (and, in most cases, this implies 
an addition to the avifauna of British India and Burma,) in the short space 
of three years. It is scarcely necessary to say that a large proportion of the 
additions are Malay species now detected for the first time in Southern 
Tenasserim. The whole bird fauna of British India and its dependencies, 
inclusive of Ceylon and Burma, as now known, comprises, according to Mr. 
Hume’s estimate, about 1700 well authenticated species,* whilst only 1008 
* Mr. Hume informs me that the number of species, roughly calculated, is 1793 ; 
of these probably about 93 are sub-species or varieties or of doubtful occurrence within 
the limits. If the neighbouring countries, as the Laccadives, Baluchistan, Afghanistan, 
Wakhan, Upper Burma, and the western-half of the Malay Peninsula with Malacca, 
