458 ISLAND LIFE part il 



remains of this fauna must certainly be preserved in caves 

 or late Tertiary deposits, and proofs of the submergence 

 itself will be found when sought for. If, on the other hand, 

 the existing animals fairly represent those which have ever 

 reached the island, then no such remains will be discovered, 

 and there need be no evidence of any great and extensive 

 subsidence in late Tertiary times. 



Birds of Celebes. — Having thus clearly placed before us 

 the problem presented by the mammalian fauna of Celebes, 

 we may proceed to see what additional evidence is afforded 

 by the birds and any other groups of which we have 

 sufficient information. About 164 species of true land- 

 birds are now known to inhabit the island of Celebes itself. 

 Considerably more than half of these (ninety-four species) 

 are peculiar to it ; twenty-nine are found also in Borneo 

 and the other Malay Islands, to which they specially 

 belong; while sixteen are common to the Moluccas or 

 other islands of the Australian region ; the remainder being 

 species of wide range and not characteristic of either 

 division of the Archipelago. We have here a large pre- 

 ponderance of western over eastern species of birds 

 inhabiting Celebes, though not to quite so great an 

 extent as in the mammalia ; and the inference to be drawn 

 from this fact is, simply, that more birds have migrated 

 from Borneo than from the Moluccas — which is exactly 

 what we might expect both from the greater extent of the 

 coast of Borneo opposite that of Celebes, and also from the 

 much greater richness in species of the Bornean than the 

 Moluccan bird-fauna. 



It is, however, to the relations of the peculiar species of 

 Celebesian birds that Ave must turn, in order to ascertain 

 the origin of the fauna in past times ; and we must look to 

 the source of the generic types Avhich they represent to 

 give us this information. The ninety-four peculiar species 

 above noted belong to about sixty-six genera, of which 

 about twenty-three are common to the whole Archipelago, 

 and have therefore little significance. Of the remainder, 

 twelve are altogether peculiar to Celebes ; twenty-one are 

 Malayan, but not Moluccan or Australian ; while ten are 

 Moluccan or Australian, but not Malayan. This pro- 



