Page:The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma (Mammalia).djvu/11



first part of this volume, containing the Introduction, Primates, Carnivora, and Insectivora, was published at the end of June 1888. The delay of more than three years in completing the work has been caused by the necessity of devoting a large portion of my time to the editing of the five volumes belonging to the same series that have appeared since the first part of the present work was issued.

The Mammalia of British India, inclusive of Ceylon and Burma, here enumerated and described, just exceed 400 in number. Jerdon's 'Mammals of India,' published in 1867, contained descriptions of 242 species; but the area as now defined considerably exceeds the limits adopted by Jerdon, who excluded from his work all forms peculiar to Ceylon or Burma, and to all countries north of the main Himalayan range, west of the Indus, or east of the Bay of Bengal and of a line drawn northwards from the head of it. The greatest advance since Jerdon wrote, in our knowledge of Indian Mammals, has been in the orders of Chiroptera, Insectivora, and Rodentia, whilst the order with which, at the present time, our acquaintance is most imperfect is that of Cetacea.

In Sterndale's 'Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon,' published in 1884, the number of species is 482; but some of these are not found in British Territory, and