DISTRIBUTION OF MAMMALS 175 



phalangers, on the Sanghirs alone a tarsier. The spotted cuscus 

 of New Guinea is represented on Saleyer. The presence of the 

 tarsier on the Sanghir group may indicate that it came to 

 Celebes from the Philippines by way of the Sanghirs; but it 

 might have come from Borneo more easily. 



The Molucca Islands are a scattered group, not uniform 

 faunally. A flying phalanger (Petaurus) is found on Obi and 

 Batjan; on these and on Halmahera (Gilolo) cuscuses and a 

 bandicoot occur. The babirusa of Celebes occurs also in Buru. 

 Other pigs, and sambar deer which reach east as far as Buru 

 and the Gilolo group are found in Ceram. Pigs and deer are 

 especially likely to be carried about by natives and to go wild. 

 This fact explains their presence in New Guinea. 



The Lesser Sundas, with the exception of the gray cuscus on 

 Timor and Wetar, have no Australian land mammals. The 

 Australian long-eared bat (Ni/ctophilus), reported from Timor, 

 has not been certainly found there but the tube-nosed fruit bat 

 {Nyctimene) reaches this island. Spinal-winged bats, wide- 

 spread in the Australo-Oriental Subregion, are found through- 

 out the Lesser Sunda chain. Bats are more limited by water 

 barriers than may be thought but nevertheless may be carried 

 about by storms. Consequently the distribution of these mam- 

 mals is frequently erratic. 



Relatively few Oriental mammals extend as far east as Timor. 

 They include the long-tailed macaque monkey (not recorded 

 from the other islands, however), sambar deer, pigs, shrews, the 

 palm civet, and the slit-faced bat {Nycteris). This bat, as yet 

 unrecorded from the other Lesser Sundas, may be found later 

 on some of the larger ones. Porcupines reach east as far as 

 Sumbawa and possibly Flores, while a single unsatisfactory 

 record in 1867 of palm civet is known from the Aru Islands, 

 off western New Guinea. 



The Australian Faunal Region, including the Australian con- 

 tinent, Tasmania, New Guinea, the Bismarck and Solomon 

 groups, has a mammal fauna characterized by many varieties 



