Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/776

Rh 758 BIRDS [DISTRIBUTION. undoubtedly closely allied to, if not identical with, the denizens of similar districts in Africa, yet it must be re marked that such forms should be regarded in much the same light as those which frequent wide seas, and that the determination of a desert-tract must therefore depend rather on the fauna which inhabits its islands as we may term the oases which, whether plentifully or rarely, stud its sur face rather than on the fauna of the desolate space which surrounds these fertile and more favoured spots. Still, it is hardly to be denied that the influence of Ethiopian types is to be discovered in Sindh, Gujerat, and even further in the Indian peninsula. In the Ethiopian Region we again find a number of the sub-class Ratitce in the very special ized form Struthio the Ostrich and this ranges, or did range, from the immediate vicinity of the Cape of Good Hope to the confines of Algeria in the north-west, and to the banks of the Euphrates in the north-east. 1 It is even possible that within historic times it penetrated much further to the eastward and reached Sindh at least, and if this be so, the fact would lend colour to the proposed in clusion of that country within the Ethiopian Region. 2 But without concerning ourselves with speculations of this kind, there is enough and to spare which marks the Region as one of the chief zoological portions of the globe, despite the mystery which still hangs over its interior and at pre sent completely defies any attempt to trace the boundaries of its Subregions or provinces beyond a comparatively little distance from the coast. .eral So large a portion of the Ethiopian Region lies between racter- the tropics that no surprise need be expressed at the rich- we have considered. Between 50 and 60 families of land- birds alone are found within its limits, and of them at least 8 Buphagidce, Eurycerotidce, Musophagidce, Irrisoridce, Leptosomidce, Coliidce, Serpentariidae, and Struthionidoe are peculiar ; but it is singular that of them, only 2 belong to the Order Passeres, a proportion which is not maintained in any other tropical Region. The number of peculiar genera is too great for them to be named here ; some of the most remarkable, however, especially of those peculiar to one of its Subregions, whose Bird-life has been differ entiated to a degree that is very extraordinary, will pre sently be mentioned. dts of The subdivision of the Ethiopian Region is perhaps regions. .accomplished with less difficulty than in the case of the more temperate tracts with which we have lately had to do. Bounded on the north by the Mediterranean Sub- region of the Palsearctic Region, we have a Subregion ex tending from the Cape-Verd Islands on the one side of the continent to Socotra on the other ; and with this we must comprehend all the Asiatic territory, whatever be its limits, which is, for zoogeographical purposes, to be annexed to the Ethiopian Region. On the West Coast of Africa the southern frontier of this Subregion, which we may call the &quot;Libyan/ 3 seems to lie a little to the northward of lat. 10 N.; but, owing to the unexplored state of the country, we quickly lose trace of its confines. We may perhaps 1 Xenophon, Anabasis, I. v. 2. 2 For all that can be said as to the supposed former extent of the .Ostrich s range in Asia, and, indeed, for the best account of this Bird that has ever been published, see Finsch and Hartlaub, Vogel Ost- Afrikas (pp. 597 -607), forming the fourth volume of Von der Decken s Rrise in Ost-Afrika (Leipzig und Heidelberg: 1870). Fossil remains of Struthio have been indubitably recognized from the Sivalik hills in India. 3 In using this name the writer follows Blyth (Nature, iii. p. 428, March 30, 1871). Mr Sharpe, whose kind assistance in preparing this portion of the present treatise the author gratefully acknowledges, has proposed to call this Subregion the &quot;Abyssinian,&quot; from its lead ing characteristics being most evident in that country, but that name &quot;would seem to be better applied to a province, and accordingly, here a moro general designation appears preferable. presume that they more or less follow that parallel to somewhere about long. 15 E., and then trend in a south easterly direction. On the East Coast the frontier of the Libyan Subregion extends from near Cape Guardafui in a south-westerly direction towards the system of the Great Lakes, all the waters flowing to which it may be held to include; and is then succeeded by the &quot; Mosambican &quot; Subregion, which continues perhaps to Sofala. Beginning on the West Coast, where the Libyan Subregion stops, we have another Subregion, the &quot; Guinean,&quot; comprising the seaboard from Sierra Leone to somewhere about Angola ; but as to how far inland this penetrates we are absolutely without information. The rest of continental Africa forms what may be called the &quot; Caffrarian&quot; 4 Subregion, while Madagascar, the Comoros, and the widely-scattered Mascarcne Islands, constitute a fifth Subregion, the most distinct and remarkable of all, and for this we may most reasonably use the name &quot; Madagascarian.&quot; (1.) The Libyan Subregion, the first we have separated, may perhaps be broken up into four provinces the Arabian, Egyptian, Abyssinian, and the Gambian ; but it must not be expected that all their respective boundaries can be distinctly drawn those of the first excepted, which, however, seems to be the one that has precisely the fewest positive characteristics, and the propriety of its recognition, except on purely geographical grounds, is most question able. We may doubt whether it has more than half-a- dozen peculiar species ; but then we know next to nothing of the zoology of any part of Arabia, save the Peninsula of Sinai and the desert of the Tih. As before mentioned the Ostrich occurs here, but its present northern or eastern limits are indeterminate ; we know, however, that within recent years it has been killed in the desert of Belka, just on the other side of the Dead Sea. The species which seem to be peculiar to the Jordan basin are Crateropus chalybceus, Nectarinia osea, Passer moabiticus, Amydrus tristrami and Caprimulgus tamaricis, the last but one of which in its name commemorates Canon Tristram, the naturalist to whom we owe most of our information as to the fauna of this singular district. The Egyptian province, so far as regards the valley of the Lower Nile, is remarkable for being, as already stated, overrun by migrants from Europe during the winter, and since it is chiefly from the observations of travellers at this season that most of our knowledge is derived, it is perhaps not very wonderful that many zoogeographers are inclined to include this district within the Paleearctic Region. The number of species which occur in Egypt and Nubia, as given by Captain Shelley, 5 is 352, but many of them he says are of doubtful occurrence. Of these more than 230 are natives of the Palsearctic Region ; but only between 50 and 60, or about one quarter of them, remain to breed in Egypt, and of this number a considerable proportion do not breed in Europe, but only in the Barbary States. The extra-Palaearctic character of the Egyptian ornis seems to be thus fully established. Respecting the Abyssinian province very full particulars are included in the lately-completed work of Dr von Heuglin; 6 but for our purpose it is not easy thence to ascertain the precise features of its avifauna, since he has not discriminated between it and the Egyptian. North east Africa, according to him, has about 950 species of Birds, of which he reckons about 325 as migrants from Europe or Western Asia that is to say, from the Palsearctic Region. Cf these 113 breed in that Region, as well as in North-eastern Africa ; 294 have been observed in the Bar- 4 Again following Blyth (loc. cit.} 5 Handbook to the Birds of Egypt. London: 1872. 6 Ornithologie Nordost-Afrika s. Cassel: 1859-75 Libys Arab P rovi Egyp provi Abyss
 * s- ness of its fauna relatively to that of the last two Regions