Of the Timor Group. 217 



subjected to volcanic action. The land has been raised and 

 sunk again ; the straits have been naiTowed or widened ; 

 many of the islands may have been joined and dissevered 

 again ; violent floods have again and again devastated the 

 mountains and plains, carrying out to sea hundreds of forest- 

 trees, as has often happened during volcanic eruptions in 

 Java ; and it does not seem improbable that once in a thou- 

 sand, or ten thousand years, there should have occurred such 

 a favorable combmation of circumstances as would lead to 

 the migration of two or three land animals from one island 

 to another. Tliis is all that we need ask to account for the 

 very scanty and fragmentary group of Mammalia whicli now 

 inhabit the large island of Timor. The deer may very prob- 

 ably have been introduced by man, for the Malays often 

 keep tame fawns; and it may not require a thousand, or 

 even five hundred years, to establish new characters in an 

 animal removed to a country so difierent in climate and vege- 

 tation as is Timor fi-om the Moluccas. I have not mentioned 

 horses, which are often thought to be wild in Timor, because 

 there are no grounds whatever for such a belief The Timor 

 ponies have every one an owner, and are quite as much do- 

 mesticated animals as the cattle on a South American ha- 

 cienda. 



I have dwelt at some length on the origin of the Timorese 

 fauna, because it appears to me a most interesting and in- 

 structive problem. It is very seldom that we can trace the 

 animals of a district so clearly as we can in this case to two 

 definite sources ; and still more rarely that they furnish such 

 decisive evidence of the time, and the manner, and the pro- 

 portions of their introduction. We have here a group of 

 oceanic islands in miniature — islands which have never formed 

 part of the adjacent lands, although so closely approaching 

 them; and their productions have the characteristics of true 

 oceanic islands slightly modified. These characteristics are, 

 the absence of all Mammalia except bats, and the occurrence of 

 peculiar species of birds, insects, and land shells, which, though 

 found nowhere else, are plainly related to those of the nearest 

 land. Thus, we have an entire absence of Australian mam- 

 mals, and the presence of only a few stragglers from the west, 

 which can be accounted for in the manner already indicated. 



