xxiii] LIFE IN LONDON 395 



of animals in the archipelago. The first of these was a list of 

 the birds from the Sula or Xulla Islands, situated between 

 Celebes and the Moluccas, but by their position seeming to 

 belong more to the latter. I believe that not a single species 

 of bird was known from these small islands, and I should 

 probably not have thought them worth visiting had I not 

 been assured by native traders that a very pretty little 

 parrot was found there and nowhere else. I therefore sent 

 Mr. Allen there for two months, and he obtained a small but 

 very interesting collection, consisting of forty-eight species of 

 birds, of which seven were entirely new, including the little 

 parrakeet which I named Loriculus sdateri, and which is one 

 of the most beautiful of the genus. But the most interesting 

 feature of the collection was that it proved indisputably that 

 these islands, though nearer to Bouru and the Batchian 

 group than to Celebes, really formed outlying portions of the 

 latter island, since no less than twenty of the species were 

 found also in Celebes and only ten in the Moluccas, while of 

 the new species five were closely allied to Celebesian types, 

 while only two were nearest to Molluccan species. This very 

 curious and interesting result has led other naturalists to visit 

 these islands as well as all the other small islands which 

 cluster around the strangely formed large island. The result 

 has been that considerable numbers of new species have been 

 discovered, while the intimate connection of these islands with 

 Celebes, so clearly shown by this first small collection, has 

 been powerfully enforced. 



During the succeeding five years I continued the study of 

 my collections, writing many papers, of which more than a 

 dozen related to birds, some being of considerable length and 

 involving months of continuous study. But I also wrote 

 several on physical and zoological geography, six on various 

 questions of anthropology, and five or six on special applica- 

 tions of the theory of natural selection. I also began work- 

 ing at my insect collections, on which I wrote four rather 

 elaborate papers. As several of these papers discussed matters 

 of considerable interest and novelty, I will here give a brief 



