INTRODUCTION. 



When we first planned a treatise on the Birds of Celebes, we soon found 

 that it would be quite impossible to restrict ourselves to the mainland, as this 

 is everywhere surrounded by larger or smaller islands which are so connected 

 with it by their Avifaunas that they could not be left out; at the same time it 

 proved impossible to define a natural zoological frontier between certain of these 

 islands and the adjacent ones. Our frontispiece-map shows the limits we decided 

 upon, viz. the inclusion of the Talaut Islands in the north, the Sula Islands in 

 the east, and the Djampea Group in the south, though at each of these points 

 elements from, respectively, the Philippines, the Moluccas, and the Lesser Sunda 

 Islands are very marked. The boundary so chosen adjoins to the north the 

 southern limit of the Philippines, as defined by Tweeddale, Worcester and 

 Bourns, and others; to the east it coincides with Salvadori's western border, 

 as drawn in his "Ornitologia della Papuasia e delle Molluche"; to the west 

 it follows the eastern boundary of Borneo, as adopted in Everett's "List of the 

 Birds of the Bornean Group", and by other writers; to the south it takes in 

 all the islands between Celebes and the Lesser Sundas. The book may thus 

 be said to fill up an ornithological gap, and the bounds as chosen appear also 

 to be the most natural, except possibly (?) in the case of the Djampea Group. 

 Moreover, the Avifauna of the adjacent groups often gives a clue to the deriv- 

 ation of non-Celebesian forms in Celebes; it would, therefore, be inadvisable 

 to leave them out. 



Meyer i Wiglesworth, Birds of Celebes (Mny 4ili IS'JSl. 



