330 VISCOUNT WALDEN ON THE BIRDS OF CELEBES. [May 2, 



explained and depicted by Mr. Wallace*, that it is almost unne- 

 cessary for me to add any observations of my own on these points. 



" This great naturalist has shown that the principal and most 

 striking peculiarity of the fauna of Celebes is its individuality — a 

 generalization fully supported by the evidence furnished by its birds ; 

 and it is the chief object of this paper to give a list of all the birds 

 authentically recorded as inhabitants of Celebes, and to show in some 

 detail the zoogeographical relation of its genera and species. 



" Our knowledge of the Celebean ornis has been principally de- 

 rived from the discoveries of the Dutch travellers Forsten, Von 

 Rosenberg, and Bernstein, and from those of Mr. Wallace. Yet 

 although the Dutch naturalists and our great English traveller ran- 

 sacked those parts of Celebes they traversed or resided in, they all 

 more or less covered the same ground. The larger portion of the 

 island (fully two-thirds of its area) still remains ornithologically 

 unknown. 



"All the species yet described from Celebes appear to have been 

 obtained from the districts of Macassar and Bonthain in the south, 

 and from the districts of Gorontalo and Minahassa in the north. 

 That part of the island which stretches north from about the fifth 

 parallel S. lat. to the Gulf of Tontoli, and west thence to Limbaito, 

 the lesser of the two eastern limbs of the island, the whole of the 

 south-east limb, and all the central country from which these limbs 

 extend seem to have never been explored by an ornithologist. 



" The group of islands of which Peling is the largest, and which 

 are only separated from the Sula Islands by the Greyhound Straits, 

 the Togian or Schildpad Islands in the Gulf of Tomini, the islands 

 of Pagasane and of Bceton, the island of Saleyer, with its train of 

 smaller satellites almost connecting Celebes with Flores, are nearly 

 wholly unknown. The Sanghir Islands in the north, and the Sula 

 Islands to the east, although as yet only partially investigated, have 

 been shown to possess some species identical with those found in 

 Celebes ; consequently they have been regarded by recent authors as 

 forming along with Celebes a separate zoological subarea. But I 

 propose in the following list to include only those species of birds 

 which are known to inhabit the island of Celebes itself. A more 

 definite and more accurate idea of the peculiarities of the Celebean 

 ornis will thus be presented than if genera which occur in the Sula 

 Islands were placed side by side with Celebean genera. If we threw 

 together the ornis of the Sula Islands with that of Celebes we shall 

 find non-Celebean genera (such as Criniger, Ceyx, Platycercus, 

 Pachycephala, and Monarcha) appearing in the list ; and the really 

 anomalous character of the Celebean avifauna actually existing on 

 the main island would thereby be apparently greatly modified. 



" Mr. Wallace {op. cit. i. p. 425) has estimated the number of 

 known Celebean species of birds at one hundred and ninety-one. I 

 have only been able to add two more to that number ; yet there are 

 doubtless many more species represented by Celebean examples in 

 the museums of Europe. On the other hand, many species have 

 * Malay Archipelago, i. chap, xviii. 



