Il. A List of the Birds known to inhabit the Island of Celebes. By Anruur, 
Viscount Wa.pEn, F.R.S., President of the Society. 
Read May 2nd, 1871. 
[Puares III. to X.] 
SITUATED in the midst of the vast collection of islands which contribute to form the 
’ Malay archipelago, Celebes possesses an avifauna of a type peculiar to itself. The 
geographical position of the island and the leading characteristics of its fauna have been 
so clearly explained and depicted by Mr. Wallace’, that it is almost unnecessary 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 relations of its genera and species. 
Our knowledge of the Celebean ornis has been principally derived 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 ransacked 
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 east thence to Limbotto, 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 orni- 
thologist. 
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 Beeton, and 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 
? Malay Archipelago, vol. i, chap, xviii. 
VOL. VIII.—PART U. May, 1872. FE 
