Introduction: Wallace's line. &j 



E. Reclus, 1889 (Nouv. Geogr. univ., vol. XIV, 209) sticks to the line 

 and says: "De tons les cotes elle [Celebes] apparait isolee; c'est une terre dont 

 I'isolement complet est un fait geologique datant des ages les plus recules"(I'. 



E. V. Martens published in 1889 his "Tagebuch-Notizen" from Banda, 

 Timor and Flores (see: Z. d. Ges. f. Erdk. zu Berlin, vol. 24, p. 83) and concludes 

 (p. 104) that Timor, Celebes, the Philippines, and the islands east of Java 

 represent the region of intermixture of the eastern and western animal worlds 

 and may just as well belong to neither as to both. "Nearly every zoological 

 genus presents a different frontier, a sharply defined common frontier does not 

 exist in nature, nor here." 



O. Warburg remarked in 1890 ("Die Flora des asiatischen Monsungebietes" : 

 Verh. Ges. Deutsch. Naturf. Bremen, Allg. Theil, p. 15 of sep. copy) that im- 

 portant as Wallace's line is for understanding the evolution of the floras in 

 detail, the character as a whole was not altered by the separation; the greatest 

 part of the present flora would have already transmigrated before the separation, 

 thus certainly long before Miocene times. 



K. Martin in a paper of 1890: "Die Kei-Inseln und ihr Verhaltniss zur 

 Australisch-Asiatischen Grenzlinie" (Tdschr. Kon. Ned. Aardr. Gen. 2. ser. VII, 

 273) says: "To the west of Great Key and to the north-west of Timor lies a 

 natural and geognostically well-founded line of separation between the islands 

 dismembered from the Asiatic and Australian continents." He adds, however, 

 that it is not to be expected that on the continental borders the present faun- 

 istic and floristic character of single islands should have a direct connection 

 with the geological line of separation or be congruent with it, because peripheric 

 parts of the continental masses are at times connected or separated. 



E. L. Trouessart, in 1890 ("La Geographic Zoologique", pp.89, 131, 243 

 and maj) p. 9\ simply accepts Wallace's line. 



E. V. Martens sho\ved in 1891 ("Landschnecken des Indischen Arch.": 

 Weber's Zool. Erg. 11, 263) that the land-shells do not allow of a sharp line 

 being drawn between Celebes and Borneo, though they differ considerably, for 

 North Celebes cannot be separated from the Philippines, and the differences 

 between Java on the one side, and Flores and Timor on the other, are less 

 conspicuous. The region to the east of Celebes does not offer any uniformity 

 with this island and cannot be regarded as constituting a unit with it. 



P. L. Sclater, who, as is well know^n. first divided the earth into six orni- 

 thological regions now widely adopted for animals in general ("On the general 

 Geographical Distribution of the Members of the Class Aves": J. Proc. Linn. Soc. 

 1858 II, 130—145)') in 1891 recognised the line ("On Recent Advances in our 

 knowledge of the Geographical Distribution of birds": Ibis, p. 515), though he 

 gave Celebes a special heading (p. 530) and says (p. 533) that Celebes is "a 



collector as he would gain a similar hanest ou the high mountains of Celebes, which rise to nearly 10 000 

 feet, and from where next to nothing is as yet known. 



•) See. also, his lecture ou "The Geogr. Distribution of Mammals" Sc. Lect. f. the people (6) 1874 p. 80. 



