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Show 664 MR. II. J. ELWES ON THE GEOGRAPHICAL [June 17, hard to account for, viz. that the animals of Formosa should be, almost without exception, generically the same as those of the Himalaya. W e 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 mountainous 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 Phasianidee, the Timaliidce, and Leiotrichinee of Jerdon, and is, compared with most parts of the world, very poor in Raptores and Grallatores. Out of 170 species of birds obtained in or near Moupin by Pere David, only 9 (namely, Picoides funebris, Coccothraustes vulgaris, Chlorospiza sinica, Eophona personata, Thaumalea amherstice, Crossoptilon tibetanum, Tetraophasis obscurus, Cholornis paradoxa, and a genus allied to Pnoepyga and Troglodytes) 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 iifspecies 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 Himalaya itself. Among the most curious birds found here may be mentioned Cholornis paradoxa, Verr., a bird so like Heteromorpha unicolor, Hodgs., that if the feet were cut off I do not think it could be distinguished. It has, however, the outer toe aborted in such a peculiar way, that it has been made by its describer the type of a new genus. This bird seems to have the same habit of skulking in dense jungle of hill-bamboo that I have observed in Paradoxornis, Heteromorpha, and Suthora. Pnoepyga troglodytoides, Verr., is another curious bird, doubtfully assigned to that genus by its describer, and very different in appearance from any Pnoepyga I have seen. Many species previously only known from the Himalaya were found at Moupin by M . David,-among them Grandala ccelicolor, Hodgs., Cinclus cashmeriensis, Gould, Lerwa nivicola, Hodgs., and Accentor nipalensis, Hodgs.-all birds which I have only seen at elevations above 14000 feet in Sikim. Coupling with this the absence of Barbets, Fruit-Pigeons, Trogons, Hornbills, and the tropical genera of Woodpeckers (all birds which are found as high as 5000 or 6000 feet in Sikim), I conclude that the lowest valleys in this part of Thibet are of a much more alpine nature than in Sikim, and subject in winter to a more severe climate. Certhia himalayana, which I have examined and compared with the |
