CELEBES: A PROBLEM IN DISTRIBUTION 113 



has originated from an Oriental stock, and the occurrence 

 of an allied species in the Philippines tends to show that 

 these islands were connected at no very remote epoch with 

 Celebes. Now the Philippines themselves, as shown by 

 their deer, have intimate relationships with Borneo, and 

 thus with the mainland. 



The deer reported to occur in the island is a variety of 

 the rusa of Java, and apparently identical with the form 

 found in the Moluccas. It is generally considered to have 

 been introduced, but as Celebes shows so many signs of 

 affinity with the more western Malay islands in its animals, 

 this does not by any means appear certain. Anyway, the 

 Moluccan race may well have been exported from Celebes 

 by the Malays. 



The next most noteworthy animals in the mammalian 

 fauna of the island are two species of monkeys, both 

 remarkable for their black colour. The first of these is 

 the short-tailed black baboon, a species representing a 

 genus by itself, but with relationships to the true baboons 

 of Africa and South-West Asia. Such relationship, from a 

 geographical point of view, might seem difficult to account 

 for, and to those who neglect the animals of a past epoch 

 it would appear well-nigh inexplicable. But it happens 

 that extinct baboons occur in India ; and as they doubtless 

 also existed in other parts of the Oriental region, there 

 is no difficulty in accounting for the origin of the Cele- 

 besian representative of the group. The other species — the 

 moor macaque — belongs to a widely spread Oriental genus. 



But the most curious of all the mammals of the island 

 is a species of tarsier — small creatures with enormous 

 goggle eyes, slender, lanky limbs, and toes terminating 

 in suckers, distantly related to the lemurs. Now, these 

 tarsiers are strictly limited to the islands of Sumatra, 



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