Introduction: Wallace's line. ^7 



not in the first edition of 1879, p. 419, and we are not aware whether it is in 

 subsequent ones): "We thus have the Sunda Chain divided distinctly and definitely 

 into an Asiatic and an Australian portion, the dividing line coinciding with the 

 deep-sea channel existing between Bali and Lombok. This boundary is now 

 universally known as 'Wallace's line'". 



M. Weber, 1894, in his important paper: "Die Susswasser-Fische des 

 Indischen Archipels, nebst Bemerkungen iiber den Ursprung der Fauna von 

 Celebes" (Zool. Ergebnisse III, 468) came to the result that Celebes has no 

 Australian, but a highly impoverished Indian character in its fish-fauna, and 

 remarked as to the general problem (p. 473): "The unhappy line of Wallace, 

 which he himself has not formally retained for Celebes, has worked its way 

 deeply into the brains of numerous zoologists as something fascinatingly simple. 

 Text-books which touch upon zoogeography and get rid of the subject in a few 

 words maintain their hold on this classical frontier. And thus the Australian 

 Fauna of Celebes lives notwithstanding various protests." Prof. Weber concludes 

 (p. 476): "The original line of Wallace separates groups of islands, of which 

 the western (Borneo, Sumatra and Java) received, on account of their size, but 

 chiefly in consequence of their longer connection with the Indian continent, a 

 rich Oriental fauna and, therefore, have developed specific forms of Indian 

 character. Of the eastern, Celebes was first separated from the Indian continent 

 and remained cut off. In consequence, it retained single older forms, which 

 developed independently. — Consisting in earlier times of single smaller islands, 

 its fauna has remained poor." 



F. E. Beddard, in 1895 ("A Text-Book of Zoogeography"), recognises 

 Wallace's line (p. 103 and frontispiece-map) as a frontier between the Oriental 

 and the Australian Regions (p. 103 and 113), though (p. 113) he says that Celebes 

 "probably" belongs to the latter, but (p. 106) treats of it under the heading of 

 the Malayan Sub-region of the former. 



R. Lydekker in 1896 ("A Geographical History of Mammals", p. 45 and 

 map), adopts Heilprin's Transition Region (see above) as an Austro-Malayan Region 

 and as one of four Regions of the Notogaeic Realm (p. 27): "Poverty, and an 

 admixture of Australian and Malayan types, with a very marked preponderance 

 of the latter, are the leading features in its mammalian fauna". He says, how- 

 ever, that from the living mammalian fauna one might be inclined to place the 

 whole area within the limits of the Oriental Region. He evidently hesitates 

 in giving Celebes a fixed position, the more so as "there is absolutely no palae- 

 ontological evidence to help us in regard to past history". 



C. Hedley ("Mollusca of the Oriental region": Journ. of Malacol. IV, 53) 

 showed, 1895, that the line between Bali and Lombok has no value for the 

 Mollusca, as the land-shells of these two islands do not difi"er essentially. 



Likewise E. v. Martens showed in 1896 (Sb. Ges. naff Freunde zu Berlin 

 p. 157;, that of 10 land-shells from Lombok 3 are geographically neutral, 4 are 



