350 ZOOLOGICAL GEOGRAPHY. [part hi. 



localities and which must therefore be held to be typical Ma- 

 layan groups, the following are absent from Java: Viverra, 

 Gymnopus, Lutra, Helarctos, Tapirus, Elcphas, and Gymnura; 

 while of those known to occur in two, and which, owing to our 

 imperfect knowledge, may very probably one day be discovered in 

 the third, the following are equally wanting : Simla, Siamanga, 

 Hemigalea, Paguma, Rhinosciurus, and Rhizomys. It may be 

 said this is only negative evidence, but in the case of Java it is 

 much more, because this island is not only the best known of 

 any in the archipelago, but there is perhaps no portion of 

 British India of equal extent so well known. It is one of the 

 oldest of the Dutch possessions and the seat of their colonial 

 government ; good roads traverse it in every direction, and ex- 

 perienced naturalists have been resident irj various parts of 

 it for years together, and have visited every mountain and every 

 forest, aided by bands of diligent native collectors. We 

 should be almost as likely to find new species of mammalia 

 in Central Europe as in Java ; and therefore the absence of 

 such animals as the Malay bear, the elephant, tapir, gymnura, 

 and even less conspicuous forms, must be accepted as a 

 positive fact. 



In the other islands there are still vast tracts of forest in the 

 hands of natives and utterly unexplored, and any similar absence 

 in their case will prove little ; yet on making the same com- 

 parison in the case of Borneo, the most peculiar and the least 

 known of the other portions of the sub-region, we find only 

 2 genera absent which are found in the three other divisions, 

 and only 3 which are found in two others. A fact to be noted 

 also is, that the only genus found in Java but not in other parts 

 of the sub-region (Helictis) occurs again in North India; and 

 that some Javan species, as Rhinoceros javanicus, and Lepus hir- 

 gosa occur again in the Indo-Chinese sub-region, but not in the 

 Malayan. 



Among the birds we meet with facts of a similar import ; 

 and though the absence of certain types from Java is not quite 

 so certain as among the mammalia, this is more than balanced 

 by the increased number of such deficiencies, so that if a few 



