Page:The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma (Mammalia).djvu/29

Rh cated. The following subregions may be accepted as convenient and as approximately correct:—

I. Tibetan. The Upper Indus valley (Gilgit, Ladák, &c.) and the higher Himalaya above 12,000 or 14,000 feet.

II. Himalayan. The southern slopes of the Himalaya, from the base to about the limit of trees.

III. Indian. India from the base of the Himalaya to Cape Comorin, with the exception of the Malabar coast, but with the addition of Northern Ceylon.

IV. Malabar or Ceylonese. The Malabar coast and the neighbouring hills as far north as the Tapti river, together with Southern Ceylon.

V. Burmese. All Burma except South Tenasserim, and with the addition of Assam and the intervening countries.

VI. South Tenasserim. This is the northern extremity of the great Indo-Malayan subregion, comprising the Malay Peninsula and several of the islands.

Some of these may require further subdivision. Thus the fauna of the North-west Provinces and Punjab differs considerably from that of Southern India, and both areas exhibit zoological distinctions from the forest-clad tracts of South-western Bengal. There is also much difference between the animals of Pegu and Arakan, on the one hand, and those of the drier regions of Upper Burma on the other; and even greater distinctions may be traced between those found in the subtropical and those inhabiting the temperate regions of the Himalaya. On the other hand, the subtropical Himalayas were united with the Burmese subregion by Wallace, and the two are, perhaps, zoologically more allied to each other than to any other subregion.

It is well to notice that the Tibetan subregion is Palæarctic, whilst the other five subdivisions are included in the Oriental Region.

The preceding remarks apply to the 'Fauna of British India' in general; the following relate to the present volume. The classification of Mammals here adopted vas proposed by Professor Flower in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London for 1883, pp. 178–186. The arrangement is but slightly modified from that employed by the same author in the last (ninth) edition of the 'Encyclopædia Britannica' (Article "Mammalia"). Although this classification is, so far as I am able to judge, the best hitherto published, there are, as will be mentioned in the