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891 EAST ASIA.
red face, differing but slightly from the Barbary variety,
*
W)
is found in Hondo as far
north as the Tsugar Strait, the extreme northern limit of the quadrumana in East
Asia. A species of wild boar, an antelope, a deer, several kinds of rodents, nine
varieties of the bat, and various cetacea, complete the series of local mammals, of
which, apart from the marine animals, Wallace enumerates altogether thirty
species, all except five peculiarly Japanese. The genera, however, differ in no
respects from those of the mainland, while the salient features of this fauna, resem-
bling those of Manchuria and China, recall the time when the archipelago was
Fig.
connected with the mainland.
183. BAUOJSH : FAC-SIMILE or A JAPANESE DESIGN. Some traces are also found of
relationship between the
animals of Nip-pon and North
America, which are also attri-
buted to an isthmus of dry
land formerly uniting the two
northern continents. Never-
theless, the differences now
existing between the allied
species show that all land
communication has been inter-
rupted for long geological
periods.
The Japanese avifauna,
better known than the mam-
malia, is less varied than might
be expected from the prox-
imity
to China. While the
latter region possesses over
four hundred, Nip-pon has no
more than two hundred and
fifty species, nearly all resembling
those of the mainland.
In summer many birds migrate
northwards across Sakhalin or
the Kuriles, and according to
Scebohm there are only eleven
species undoubtedly distinct from those of other regions. But amongst those
common to the archipelago and other parts of the Old World, it is remarkable
that several are separated from each other by thousands of miles. Thus a kind
of pigeon unknown in China is peculiar to the Himalayas, Java, and Japan,
while a Japanese jay is met elsewhere only in Europe, a distance of 6,000
miles. These species evidently at one time occupied all the intervening spaces,
where, owing to changes in the surroundings they have gradually become extinct,
and are thus now confined to narrow areas at either extremity of their former