The American Naturalist Volume 2 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1869 edition. Excerpt: ...a part; yet how different the inhabitants from those of similar situations in our own land, equally given to man for his habitation and place of development Tristram noticed 322 species of birds within the range of the ancient territory. Of these, 230 were land, and 92 water birds, i.e. Natatores and the wading Cursores. Of the 230, seventy-nine are common to the British Islands, and thirty-six of them are found in China, but a small proportion extending their range to both these extremes. Of the water birds, which are always more widely distributed, fifty-five of the ninety-two are British, and fifty-seven Chinese. Twenty-seven appear to be confined to Palestine and to the immediately adjacent country; the largest of these is a crow. Taking the 230 land birds at a glance, we find the utter absence of so many of the well-known forms that enliven our grounds and forests. The absence of Tanagridre (woodwarblers") and Icteridie ("black-and hanging-bird" type) changes the aspect of the bird-fauna at once. What have we here, then, of nine-quilled Oscincs to enliven the meadows like our swarms of blackbirds, or fill the tree-tops and thickets with flutter like our wood-warblers? Nothing; for the twenty-four species of finches, Fringillidre, will but balance our own, though the genera are all different but four, and they the most weakly represented by species. We must look to the higher series, the ten-quilled song-birds, for the missing rank and file. While a much larger extent of the Eastern United States possesses fifty species of these types, the little Palestine has already furnished a list of one hundred and twenty-eight. First, of the crows which verge nearest Icteridse by the starlings, we have thirteen species against five in...