Birds and Nature Vol. 09 No. 2 [February 1901]Various
History
Birds and Nature Vol. 09 No. 2 [February 1901]
Various
Birds -- Periodicals; Natural history -- Periodicals
completes the list. Broadly speaking, this region comprises that part of
Asia which lies east of the Indus river south of the Himalaya mountains
except the eastern half of the drainage basin of the Yang-tse-kiang
river, reaching the coast just south of Shanghai, including the island
of Formosa, the Philippines, Borneo, Java, Sumatra and Ceylon. This is
the Oriental Region of Wallace. There are, apparently, but two families
of birds peculiar to this region: the bulbuls and the broad-bills; but
there are very many genera and species found nowhere else in the world.
The king-crows, sun-birds, swallow-shrikes, argus pheasant, jungle fowl
and the well-known peacocks belong here. Very many of the birds of this
region are gaudily colored and striking in appearance.
Each of these great regions, except possibly New Zealand, are readily
divisible into sub-regions, and these again into areas of lesser extent,
until each fauna may be assigned its proper place. Thus in the Holarctic
Region we recognize the Nearctic, which comprises about all of North
America, and a Palearctic sub-region, the outlines of which have already
been sketched. Within the Nearctic three minor regions are recognized.
The Arctic “includes that part of the continent and its adjacent islands
north of about the limit of forest vegetation” (Allen). That is, extreme
northern and northwestern Alaska, sweeping southeasterly through British
America to and including Hudson Bay, northern and northeastern Labrador
and northern Newfoundland. The Cold Temperate, which lies next south,
begins in the east near Quebec, then sweeps westward past the Great
Lakes almost to Winnipeg, thence in a northwesterly direction just west
of Lake Winnipeg; from there in a more westerly direction to the
mountains, which it follows even into northern Mexico as a narrow line;
from the west coast at the north end of Vancouver Island it runs east to
the mountains. Maine and Nova Scotia are a part of the Allegheny belt
which reaches to Alabama. Below this southern limit of the Cold
Temperate lies the Warm Temperate, extending almost to Central America.
But this is again subdivided into an eastern Humid Province which ends
at the Plains, and a western Arid Province. These are again subdivided
into an Appalachian Subprovince and an Austroriparian Subprovince for
the Humid Province, and a Sonoran and Campestrian Subprovince for the
Arid Province. But the boundaries of these minor subdivisions are not
yet definitely settled, nor are the characteristic species in each
finally decided upon, so it will not be profitable to carry our
investigation further at this time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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