CHAP. xaii.J THE AUSTRALIAN REGION. 419 



cuius is Malayan, and especially Philippine, but it reaches as far 

 as Mysol. Treron is here at its eastern limit, and is represented 

 in Bouru and Ceram by one of the most beautiful species. 

 Ncopus, a Malayan eagle, is said to occur in the Moluccas. We 

 find then only three characteristic Indo-Malay • types in the 

 Moluccas, — Griniger, Batrachostomus, and Treron. All are repre- 

 sented by distinct and well marked species, indicating a some- 

 what remote period since their ancestors entered the district 

 but all are birds of considerable powers of flight, so that a very 

 little extension of the islands in a south-westerly direction 

 would afford the means of transmission, but this could not well 

 have been by way of Celebes, because the two former genera are 

 unknown in that island. 



It is evident, therefore, that the Moluccas are wholly Papuan 

 in their zoology ; yet they are no less clearly derivative, and must 

 have obtained their original immigrants under conditions that 

 rendered a full representation of the fauna impossible. Such 

 remarkable and dominant types as the eleven genera of Para- 

 diseidse, with Cracticus, Rectcs, Todopsis, Machccrirhynchus, Ge?y- 

 gone, Dacelo, Podargus, Cyclopsitta, Microglossum., Nasiterna, Chal- 

 copsitta, and Goura, — all characteristic Papuan groups, found in 

 almost all the islands and most of them very abundant, are yet 

 totally absent from the Moluccas. Taking this, in conjunction 

 with the absence of the two genera of Papuan kangaroos and 

 the other smaller groups of marsupials, and we must be 

 convinced that the Moluccas cannot be mere fragments of the 

 old Papuan land, or they would certainly, in some one or other 

 of their large and fertile islands, have preserved a more com- 

 plete representation of the parent fauna. Most of the Mol^can 

 birds are very distinct from the allied species of New Guinea ; 

 and this would imply that the entrance of the original forms 

 took place at a remote period. The two peculiar genera with 

 clearly Papuan affinities, show the same thing. The cassowary, 

 found only in the large island of Ceram and distinct from any 

 Papuan species, would however seem to have required a land 

 connection for its introduction, almost as much as any of the 

 larger mammalia. 



