4G0 ISLAND LIFE part li 



African birds— Basilornis,Enodes, Scissirostrum, Ceycopsis. 

 These may fairly be associated with the baboon-ape, 

 anoa, and babirusa, as indicating extreme antiquity and 

 some communication with the Asiatic continent at a period 

 when the forms of life and their geographical distribution 

 differed considerably from what they are at the i3resent 

 time. 



But here again we meet with exactly the same difficulty 

 as in the mammalia, in the comparative poverty of the 

 types of birds now inhabiting Celebes. Although the pre- 

 ponderance of affinity, especially in the case of its more 

 ancient and peculiar forms, is undoubtedly with Asia 

 rather than with Australia ; yet, still more decidedly than 

 in the case of the mammalia, are we forbidden to suppose 

 that it ever formed a part of the old Asiatic continent, on 

 account of the total absence of so many important and 

 extensive groups of Asiatic birds. It is not single species 

 or even grenera, but whole families that are thus absent, 

 and among them families which are pre-eminently char- 

 acteristic of all tropical Asia. Such are the Timaliidse, or 

 babblers, of which there are twelve genera in Borneo, and 

 nearly thirty genera in the Oriental Region, but of which 

 one species only, hardly distinguishable from a Malayan 

 form, inhabits Celebes ; the Phyllornithidse, or green 

 bulbuls, and the Pycnonotidfe, or bulbuls, both absolutely 

 ubiquitous in tropical Asia and Malaya, but unknown in 

 Celebes ; the Eurylsemidse, or gapers, found everywhere in 

 the great Malay Islands ; the Megalsemidae, or barbets ; the 

 Trogonidse, or trogons ; and the Phasianidae, or pheasants, 

 all pre-eminently Asiatic and Malayan but all absent from 

 Celebes, with the exception of the common jungle-fowl, 

 which, owing to the passion of Malays for cock-fighting, 

 may have been introduced. To these important families 

 may be added Asiatic and Malayan genera by the score ; 

 but, confining ourselves to these seven ubiquitous families, 

 we must ask, — Is it possible, that, at the period when the 

 ancestors of the peculiar Celebes mammals entered the 

 island, and when the forms of life, though distinct, could 

 not have been quite unlike those now living, it could 

 have actually formed a ^^xi of the continent without 



