BORNEO. 25 



whence the early voyagers sent a few specimens. It has never been found there 

 since; and as Boie and Kuhl both collected in the best known part of the island, 

 that is about Batavia and Buitenzorg, it is almost certain that the specimens 

 which they sent home came from the Moluccas, probably either Ternate or 

 Ambon, and not from Java at all, else it would have been found there within 

 the last half century. 



Of the amphibians, nine of the thirty-four species, or about twenty-seven 

 per cent, are peculiar. There is here also a genus Nyctixalus, with a single species 

 not found elsewhere. The presence of Philautus (Ixalus) itself, with two species 

 peculiar to the island, has been spoken of elsewhere in remarking their absence 

 from Sumatra and the Mentawei Islands. Rana grunniens Daud. has been re- 

 ported from Java and Ambon, another example of what happened in the days 

 when these were the only two localities frequently visited by naturalists, and 

 when collections were not kept separate as to locality with the care which is 

 considered requisite at the present time. 



In conclusion, then, we may say that the entire herpetologic fauna of Java 

 is as purely Malayan as is that of Sumatra or of Borneo, and that evidence is 

 wanting at the present time which will help us to explain the presence of a large 

 and important series of species which are common to Java and the Malay 

 Peninsula, but are not found in either Borneo or Sumatra. Whether a land 

 connection did once exist, perhaps through Banka and Billeton, is a question 

 which can be settled, if at all, only by the careful study of the herpetology of 

 these two islands, which has not yet been made. It seems really more probable 

 that our incomplete knowledge of the fauna of Sumatra is to blame for this most 

 anomalous condition. 



Borneo. 



Borneo, larger than Sumatra, in fact the largest of all the East Indies 

 with the exception of New Guinea, has a reptilian fauna as truly Malayan as 

 any of the other islands, though the amphibians show some rather anomalous 

 conditions. 



Robert Shelf ord in 1901 (Journ. Str. Br. roy. Asiat. soc, 1901, p. 43-68) 

 published a list of the reptiles known to occur upon Borneo, not including the 

 islands zoogeographically dependent from it, such as the Natuna and Palawan 

 groups of islands. In this Ust, which we may use about as it stands, he has 

 omitted the record of Macropisthodon rhodomelas (Boie), which Flower recorded 

 from Borneo (Proc. Zool. soc. London, 1899, p. 605) ; on the other hand, he has 



