Animal Life in Palestine

Abstract

EVERY naturalist who has visited Palestine—and there have been many in the years of the Great War and since?has felt a particular interest in its animals and plants. The English ornithologist sees hoopoes and bee-eaters and storks, and if he descends to Jericho may meet such exotic birds as babblers and sun-birds. Others notice the jerboas, the harvesting ants or the spring flowers, or observe that some at least of the Biblical animals still range the land. The whole flora and fauna is indeed unusual, partly because the surface and climate are so varied, partly because Palestine is like a peninsula, pushed southwards with the sea on one side and the desert on the other and at the end. It is for this reason that in Palestine many European forms, the newt and salamander, the voles and the sparrow hawk find their southerly limit.

Animal Life in Palestine:

an Introduction to the Problems of Animal Ecology and Zoogeography. By Prof. F. S. Bodenheimer. Pp. vii + 507 (70 plates). (Jerusalem: L. Mayer, 1935.) n.p.