2. SEASONS AND WINDS 

 IN THE EAST INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO. 



See Maps III and IV. 



The red colour on the maps denotes "■fine season^\ the blue colour "'rainy season", 

 while purple distinguishes districts where it would he incorrect to term the peiiod either 

 wet or fine. The arrows fly with the wind. The short arrows distributed over the 

 Archipelago skotv the persistence of the uind in the given direction (those grouped 

 5 mm apart denoting 50 per cent of the winds as coming more or less directly from 

 the (piarter indicated., those 4 mm apart denoting 60 per cent, and so on). The long 

 arrows, chiefly outside the Archipelago, demonstrate the prevailing direction of the wind 

 during the six months concerned, ivithotit reference to percentage. 



It should be observed that our sketch-maps are more or less arbitrary and 

 hypothetical, for data have not been accurately recorded from all parts, and others are 

 hidden in papers in periodicals or in special works, and tvere not consulted, as lying 

 too far from the aims of this book. We have been obliged to satisfy ourselves with 

 an approximately correct picture of the tvinds and rains of the Archipelago, and this 

 remark refers both to the arrows on our maps and to the colours. The general results 

 and general points of view of our reasoning will not be greatly affected, even if some one 

 should prove that there are faults here and there in our maps, which we are very 

 ready to concede. 



Among the many causes which effect the dispersal and the distribution of 

 birds (of. A. R. Wallace, Geogr. Distr. Anim. vol. I, chap. Ill, 1876), winds and 

 seasons play an important part — the winds directly by carrying birds involun- 

 tarily to new lands, or in offering barriers to their wandering across certain 

 zones; the seasons indirectly by their influence upon the abundance or scarcity 

 of food, which forms the strongest of several motives for migration and local 

 movements. In temperate and cold climes the alternation of the seasons, summer 

 and winter, is, as it were, accompanied by a flow and ebb of vital energy in 

 the vegetable kingdom expressed in the sprouting of foliage and the fall of the 

 leaf of deciduous trees, and, at the approach of the cold season, insects, such as 

 feed upon leaves and flowers, etc., hibernate or perish with the disappearance 

 of their food, seeds and grain are buried or hidden under snow, molluscs and 



Meyer & Wiglesworth, Birds of Celebes (May 4>ii, 1S!)M. 3 



