40 BARBOUR: ZOOGEOGRAPHY. 



Moluccas than Ceram, even though this island is one of the least known. There 

 can be no doubt about these records, as I have taken several of the Papuan 

 species myself, both at Wahaai on the north coast, and at Piru on the south, 

 and several other collectors have also reported them. This strong and peculiar 

 Papuan element can only mean that the connection of New Guinea with Ceram 

 was independent of its connection with the other islands. As yet there are 

 hardly sufficient soundings to indicate where this connection lay, though the 

 fact that Acanthophis antarcticus (Shaw) also occurs on the Ke Islands, and the 

 close hydrographic relationship of Ceram of this group through the chain of 

 small islands already referred to would suggest that there had certainly been a 

 connection with Papua by way of the Ke islands. Nevertheless the Ke Islands 

 are very far from having such a typical Papuan fauna as the Aru Islands have. 

 Then, too, the fact that Draco lineatus Daud. occurs on the island of Mysol, of 

 which I shall speak separately, suggests a different route of migration. Possibly 

 both bridges have existed, though at different geologic periods. 



Mysol. 



If there was any reason for drawing a line such as Wallace proposed between 

 Bali and Lombok, as a faunal limit, such a line might well be passed between 

 Mysol and New Guinea. For the Malayan fauna may be followed as far as 

 this island, which is the ultimate statioii to which Malayan species have ex- 

 tended specifically unchanged. The island does not, however, form a western 

 boundary of the Papuan fauna. 



This small and rather isolated island is separated by a shallow sea from New 

 Guinea, the nearest large island, the strait being not more than forty-five or 

 fifty miles wide, and from 8 to 25 fathoms in depth. It is separated also by what 

 is apparently comparatively shallow water from the small islands of Kofiau, 

 Kalap, Popa, and others which reach out towards the soutliern extension of 

 Halmahera, this island itself being distant some hundred miles in a northwesterly 

 direction. Southward of Mysol, between it and the nearest point of the island 

 of Ceram — a cape near Wahaai — there intervene about 55 miles of what 

 appears to be indeed deep water. Two soundings in this immediate region 

 give 462 and 673 fathoms respectively, and just to the eastward there is another 

 depth of 995 fathoms. The island, like most of the others in its vicinity, is 

 almost entirely unknown, but we record here only those species which are now 

 known from Mysol with considerable probability of accuracy. Many of these 

 records are based upon specimens which are mentioned by Boulenger in his 



