290 Natural History 



of time. But time may have led to a change of species in one 

 country, while in another the forms have been more permanent, 

 or the change may have gone on at an equal rate, but in a dif- 

 ferent manner in both. In either case the amount of individ- 

 uality in the productions of a district will be to some extent a 

 measure of the time that district has been isolated from those 

 that surround it. Judged by this standard, Celebes must be 

 one of the oldest parts of the Archipelago. It probably dates 

 from a period not only anterior to that when Borneo, Java, 

 and Sumatra were separated from the continent, but from that 

 still more remote epoch when the land that now constitutes 

 these islands had not risen above the ocean. Such an antiq- 

 uity is necessary, to account for the number of animal forms 

 it possesses, which show no relation to those of India or Aus- 

 tralia, but rather with those of Africa ; and we are led to spec- 

 ulate on the possibility of there having once existed a conti- 

 nent in the Indian Ocean which might serve as a bridge to con- 

 nect these distant countries. Now it is a curious fact that 

 the existence of such a land has been already thought neces- 

 sary, to account for the distribution of the cm-ious Quadrumana 

 forming the family of the Lemurs. These have their metrop- 

 olis in Madagascar, but are found also in Africa, in Ceylon, 

 in the peninsula of India, and in the Malay Archipelago as far 

 as Celebes, which is its furthest eastern limit. Dr. Sclater has 

 proposed for the hypothetical continent co.nnecting these dis- 

 tant points, and whose former existence is indicated by the 

 Mascarene Islands and the Maldive coral group, the name of 

 Lemuria. Whether or no we believe in its existence in the 

 exact form here indicated, the student of geographical distri- 

 bution must see in the extraordinary and isolated productions 

 of Celebes, proofs of the former existence of some continent 

 from whence the ancestors of these creatures, and of many 

 other intermediate forms, could have been derived. 



In this short sketch of the most striking peculiarities of the 

 natural history of Celebes, I have been obliged to enter much 

 into details that I fear will have been uninteresting to the 

 general reader, but unless I had done so my exposition would 

 have lost much of its force and value. It is by these details 

 alone, that I have been able to prove the unusual features that 

 Celebes presents to us. Situated in the very midst of an 



