198 THE MALAYAN PAPILIONID^E AS 



study of nature would have lost for me its greatest 

 charm. I should feel as would the geologist, if you 

 could convince him that his interpretation of the earth's 

 past history was all a delusion that strata were never 

 formed in the primeval ocean, and that the fossils he so 

 carefully collects and studies are no true record of a 

 former living world, but were all created just as they 

 now are, and in the rocks where he now finds them. 



I must here express my own belief that none of these 

 phenomena, however apparently isolated or insignificant, 

 can ever stand alone that not the wing of a butterfly 

 can change in form or vary in colour, except in har- 

 mony with, and as a part of the grand march of nature. 

 I believe, therefore, that all the curious phenomena I 

 have just recapitulated, are immediately dependent on 

 the last series of changes, organic and inorganic, in 

 these regions ; and as the phenomena presented by the 

 island of Celebes differ from those of all the surround- 

 ing islands, it can, I conceive, only be because the past 

 history of Celebes has been, to some extent, unique and 

 different from theirs. We must have much more evi- 

 dence to determine exactly in what that difference has 

 consisted. At present, I only see my way clear to one 

 deduction, viz., that Celebes represents one of the oldest 

 parts of the archipelago ; that it has been formerly more 

 completely isolated both from India and from Australia 

 than it is now, and that amid all the mutations it has 

 undergone, a relic or substratum of the fauna and 

 flora of some more ancient land has been here pre- 

 served to us. 



