398 MY LIFE IChap. 



Society in June. Although the Malay Archipelago as a 

 whole is one of the richest countries in varied forms of the 

 parrot tribe, that richness is almost wholly confined to its 

 eastern or Australian portion, for while there are about 

 seventy species between Celebes and the Solomon Islands, 

 there are only five in the three large islands, Java, Borneo, and 

 Sumatra, together with the Malay peninsula, while the 

 Philippine Islands have twelve. This extreme richness of 

 the Moluccas and New Guinea is also characteristic of the 

 Pacific Islands and Australia, so that the Australian region, 

 with its comparatively small area of land, contains nearly as 

 many species of this tribe of birds as the rest of the globe, 

 and considerably more than the vast area of tropical 

 America, the next richest of all the regions. 



No two groups of birds can well be more unlike in struc- 

 ture, form, and habits than parrots and pigeons, yet we find 

 that the main features of the distribution of the former, as 

 just described, are found also, though in a less marked degree, 

 in the latter. The Australian region by itself contains three- 

 fourths as many pigeons as the whole of the rest of the globe ; 

 tropical America, the next richest, having only about half 

 the number ; while tropical Africa and Asia are as poor, com- 

 paratively, in this group as they are in parrots. Turning 

 now to our special subject, the Malay Archipelago, we find 

 that it contains about one hundred and twenty species of 

 pigeons, of which more than two-thirds (about ninety species) 

 belong to the eastern or Austro-Malayan portion of it, which 

 portion thus contains considerably more species, and much 

 more varied forms and colours, than the whole of South 

 America, Mexico, and the West Indies, forming the next 

 richest area on the globe. 



But this is not the only feature in which the parrots and 

 the pigeons resemble each other. Both have characteristic 

 forms and colours, which prevail generally over the whole 

 world. In parrots this may be said to be green, varying into 

 yellow, grey, red, and more rarely blue, and, except for a 

 lengthened tail, having rarely any special developments of 

 plumage. In pigeons, soft ashy lilac or brown tints are 



