MALAY ARCHIPELAGO. 233 



conclude it to have been the most recently dismembered 

 island. 



" The Philippine Islands agree in many respects with 

 Asia and the other islands, but present some anomalies 

 to indicate that they were separated at an earlier period, 

 and have since been subject to many revolutions in their 

 physical geography. 



"Turning our attention now to the remaining portion 

 of the Archipelago, we shall find that all the islands, 

 from Celebes to Lombock eastward, exhibit almost as 

 close a resemblance to Australia and New Guinea as the 

 Western Islands do to Asia. It is well known that the 

 natural productions of Australia differ from those of Asia 

 more than those of any of the four ancient quarters of 

 the world differ from each other. Australia, in fact, 

 stands alone ; it possesses no apes or monkeys, no cats 

 or tigers, wolves, bears, or hyenas, no deer or antelopes, 

 sheep or oxen, no elephant, horse, squirrel or rabbit ; 

 none, in short, of those familiar types of quadruped 

 which are met with in every other part of the world. 

 Instead of these, it has Marsupials only, kangaroos and 

 opossums, wombats and the duck-billed platypus. In 

 birds it is almost as peculiar. It has no woodpeckers 

 and no pheasants, families which exist in every 

 other part of the world ; but instead of them it has 

 the mound-making brush-turkeys, the honeysuckers, the 

 cockatoos, and the brush-tongued lories, which are found 

 nowhere else upon the globe. All these striking pecu- 

 liarities are found also in those islands which form the 

 Austro-Malayan division of the Archipelago. 



" The great contrast between the two divisions of the 

 Archipelago is nowhere so abruptly exhibited as on 



