chap, xii.] THE ORIENTAL REGION. 359 



countries by arms of the sea rather wider than at present, 

 might have left Banca isolated, as already referred to, with its 

 proportion of the common fauna to be, in a few instances 

 subsequently modified. 



Thus we are enabled to understand how the special relations 

 of the species of these islands to each other may have been 

 brought about. To account for their more deep-seated and 

 general zoological features, we must go farther back. 



Probable Origin of the Malayan Fauna. — The typical Malayan 

 fauna is essentially an equatorial one, and must have been 

 elaborated in an extensive equatorial area. This ancient land 

 almost certainly extended northward over the shallow sea as far 

 as the island of Palawan, the Paracels shoals and even Hainan. 

 To the east, it may at one time have included the Philippines 

 and Celebes, but not the Moluccas. To the south it was limited 

 by the deep sea beyond Java. It included all Sumatra and the 

 Nicobar islands, and there is every reason to believe that it 

 stretched out also to the west so as to include the central peak 

 of Ceylon, the Maldive isles, and the Cocos islands west of 

 Sumatra. We should then have an area as extensive as South 

 America to 15° south latitude, and well calculated to develop 

 that luxuriant fauna and flora which has since spread to the 

 Himalayas. The submergence of the western half of this area 

 (leaving only a fragment in Ceylon) would greatly diminish the 

 number of animals and perhaps extinguish some peculiar types ; 

 but the remaining portion would still form a compact and exten- 

 sive district, twice as large as the peninsula of India, over the 

 whole of which a uniform Malayan fauna would prevail. The 

 first important change would be the separation of Celebes ; and 

 ; his was probably effected by a great subsidence, forming the deep 

 strait that now divides that island from Borneo. During the 

 process Celebes itself was no doubt greatly submerged, leaving 

 only a few islands in which were preserved that remnant of the 

 ancient Malayan fauna that now constitutes one of its most 

 striking and anomalous features. The Philippine area would 

 next be separated, and perhaps be almost wholly submerged ; or 



