The geographical distribution of animals, with a study of the relations ...

chap x.] THE PAL^AECTIC REGION. 221slopes of the Khingan and Peling mountains ; and China tothe Nanlirt mountains south of the Yang-tse-kiang. On thecoast of China the dividing line between it and the Orientalregion seems to be somewhere about Foo-chow, but as there ishere no natural barrier, a great intermingling of northern andsouthern forms takes place.Japan is volcanic and mountainous, with a fine climate and amost luxuriant and varied vegetation. Manchuria is hilly, witha high range of mountains on the coast, and some desert tractsin the interior, but fairly wooded in many parts. Much ofnorthern China is a vast alluvial plain, backed by hills andmountains with belts of forest, above which are the dry andbarren uplands of Mongolia. We have a tolerable knowledgeof China, of Japan, and of the Amoor valley, but very littleofCorea and Manchuria. The recent researches of Pere David inMoupin, in east Thibet, said to be between 31° and 32° northlatitude, show, that the fauna of the Oriental region here advancesnorthward along the flanks of the Yun-ling mountains (acontinuation of the Himalayas) ; since he found at differentaltitudes representatives of the Indo-Chinese, Manchurian, andSiberian faunas. On the higher slopes of the Himalayas, theremust be a narrow strip from about 8,000 to 11,000 feet elevationintervening between the tropical fauna of the Indo-Chinese subregionand the almost arctic fauna of Thibet ; and the animalsof this zone will for the most part belong to the fauna oftemperate China and Manchuria, except in the extreme westtowards Cashmere, where the Mediterranean fauna will in likemanner intervene. On a map of sufficiently large scale, therefore,it would be necessary to extend our present sub-regionwestward along the Himalayas, in a narrow strip just belowthe upper limits of forests. It is evident that the large numberof Fringillidae, Corvidae, Troglodytidae, and Paridse, often of southPalsearctic forms, that abound in the higher Himalayas, are somewhatout of place as members of the Oriental fauna, and areequally so in that of Thibet and Siberia; but they form anatural portion of that of North China on the one side, or ofSouth Europe on the other.