OF WASHINGTON. 75 



replied that it depends a good deal upon what class of animals 

 one has reference to. The mammals are decidedly of the 

 Oriental type, and many species are shared with Indo-China 

 and the East India islands, but in the highlands have been found 

 a number of genera (six or more) of muriform rodents peculiar, 

 so far as known, to Luzon. There are realty no typical repre 

 sentatives of Australian mammals. The numerous birds exhibit, 

 on the whole, nearly the same kind of relationship as the 

 mammals; their distribution has been well studied by the 

 American naturalists Steere, Bourns and Worcester. The last 

 relegates the Western Philippines (Palawan and Balabac) to the 

 Bornean group of islands. The northern and southern islands have 

 few species of Passerines in common, many genera being repre 

 sented by analogous species. There is a very slight infusion of the 

 Australian fauna. The reptiles and amphibians tell the same 

 storv. The species are quite numerous nearly a hundred rep 

 tiles and somewhere near thirty amphibians and they are else 

 where found, mostly in the neighboring archipelago, but quite a 

 number as far west as India. The peculiar species are relatives 

 of inhabitants of the same regions. The fresh water fishes are 

 of the same character, that is, the same as or relatives of 

 inhabitants of Borneo and other islands of the same group and 

 India. The terrestrial gastropods tell a different tale. The 

 hundreds of species are mostly peculiar to the Philippine archi 

 pelago and a very large proportion belong to genera peculiar to 

 the islands genera mostly distinguished by a showy hydro- 

 phanous shell and whose species are mainly arboreal. Other 

 wise the relations of the species and genera are chiefly with 

 Indo-Moluccan and Southeastern Asia and India. There is very 

 slight manifestation of the influence of the Australian fauna. 

 In fine, the universal testimony is to the effect that the fauna of 

 the Philippine islands is decidedly related to that of neighboring 

 Asia and the islands as well as India. In fact, it belongs to the 

 Oriental realm and is very slightly scarcely at all modified by 

 Australian elements. 



