Mr. P. L. Sclater on Pere David 3 s Travels in China. 171 
Elwes lias so well put forward its leading features in his re¬ 
cently published article on the geographical distribution of 
Asiatic birds *, that I cannot do better than conclude this 
short notice of Pere David^s wonderful discoveries by repeat¬ 
ing what Mr. Elwes has said. 
ff We now see that the Himalayan range is not, as it seemed 
to be, an isolated range of mountains, possessing a fauna of 
its own, but simply the boundary of a vast tract of mountain¬ 
ous country extending over the whole of Southern China and 
Indo-China, and showing, wherever its elevation exceeds about 
4000 feet, the same peculiar forms. It is par excellence a 
region of mountains; for wherever cultivated plains of low 
elevation are found, there the birds of the forest and the 
mountain disappear, and are poorly replaced, as in India and 
Eastern China, by other more wide-spread and well-known 
genera. 
“This region is the headquarters of the Phasianidse, the 
Timaliidae, and Leiotrichinse of Jerdon, and is, compared 
with most parts of the world, very poor in Paptores and 
Grallatores. 
“Out of 170 species of birds obtained in Moupin by Pere 
David, only 9, namely Picoides funebris, Coccothraustes 
vulgaris, Chlorospiza sinica, Eophona personata, Thaumalea 
amherslice, Crossoptilon tibetanum, Tetraophasis obscurus, Cho- 
lornis paradox a, and a genus allied to Pnoepyga and Troglo¬ 
dytes, are of genera not found in the Himalaya; 61 belong to 
genera either peculiar to or highly characteristic of those 
mountains; only 21, or about 12 per cent., belong to genera 
common to the whole of the Indo-Malay region,-—showing 
that, as far as our present knowledge extends, Moupin, though 
not so rich in species as Sikim or Nepal, is, from the absence 
of a low flat plain like the Terai, a district more characteristic 
of the Himalo-Chinese subregion than any part of the Hima¬ 
laya itself. 
“ Among the most curious birds found here may be men¬ 
tioned Cholornis paradox a, Verr., a bird so like Heteromorpha 
unicolor, Hodgs., that if the feet were cut off I do not think 
* P. Z. S. 1873, p. 645. 
