Origin of the Fauna of Celebes. 133 



that of Celebes has an impoverished Indian, not an Australian, 

 character. This, in the main, is also to be seen throughout 

 the other animal groups in Celebes, where the Australian 

 character is very slightly perceptible. 



Land-molluscs are, of course, very important in questions 

 of zoogeography. We therefore refer to the very clear state- 

 ment of E. v. Martens*, who is probably the greatest 

 authority on this subject. We will only quote the fol- 

 lowing : — " The land-snails of Borneo and those of Celebes 

 are still sufficiently dissimilar, notwithstanding two species in 

 common, to allow of the boundary-line being drawn here; 

 but North Celebes is not easily separated as regards its land- 

 snails from the Philippines, which are, however, placed by 

 Wallace on the Indian side. Rather less startling is the 

 difference between Java on the one side and Flores and Timor 

 on the other; the special novelty characteristic of the East — 

 the Xesta group of Naninse — is found on the island of Bali, 

 which Wallace places on the Indian side. Finally, as regards 

 land-snails there is absolutely no unity between Celebes, the 

 Moluccas, Flores, Timor, New Guinea, Australia, and the 

 countless islands of the Pacific ; no single genus or subgenus 

 of land-snails is common only to these and unrepresented in 

 other parts of the world ; even the Moluccas on the one 

 hand and Flores and Timor on the other are more dissimilar 

 than Sumatra, Borneo, and Java " 



If we turn to the mammals, which play a prominent part 

 in such questions, we find that here also the " Australian 

 character " of Celebes rests only on the inaccurate knowledge 

 of actual conditions possessed by authors who have given 

 expression to the above view. The unhappy " Wallace 

 line," which Wallace himself did not retain for Celebes, 

 has penetrated as something fascinatingly simple into the 

 brains of numerous zoologists. Text-books, which dismiss 

 zoogeography with a few words, do not allow this classical 

 line of demarcation to escape them. Thus the " Austra- 

 lian " fauna of Celebes continues to exist in spite of various 

 protests f. 



* E. v. Martens, in Max Weber, Zool. Ergebnisse, Bd. ii. 1892, p. 263. 



f To name only a few writers wbo have expressed themselves according 

 to this view, we may indicate E. Hseckel, " Zur Phylogenie d. austral. 

 Fauna," in Semon, Zoolog. Forschungsreisen in Australien u. d. Malay- 

 ischen Archipel (Jena, 1893). We read there: — "At no other point on 

 the earth are there found two neighbouring faunal regions in such marked 

 contrast as on the narrow boundary between the Indo-Malay and Austral- 

 Malay region. If we traverse the narrow strait at the south end of this 

 boundary-line — the deep Lombok Strait — we step at once out of the 

 present into Mesozoic times. Although the two neighbouring islands, 



