chap, xiii.] THE AUSTRALIAN REGION. 409 



Tasmania, both tropical and temperate, but for the most part 

 arid, yet abounding in peculiar forms in all the classes of animals ; 

 then come the Polynesian Islands, another luxuriant region of 

 tropical vegetation, yet excessively poor in most of the higher 

 groups of animals as well as in some of the lower ; , and lastly, 

 we have New Zealand, a pair of temperate forest-clad islands 

 far in the southern ocean, with a very limited yet strange and 

 almost wholly peculiar fauna. We have now to consider the 

 general features and internal relations of the faunas of each of 

 these sub-regions, together with any external relations which 

 have not been discussed while treating the region as a whole. 



I. Austro- Malay an Sub-region. 



The central mass on which almost every part of this sub- 

 region is clearly dependent, is the great island of New Guinea, 

 inhabited by the Papuan race of mankind ; and this, with the 

 surrounding islands, which are separated from it by shallow seas 

 and possess its most marked zoological features, are termed Papua. 

 A little further away lie the important groups of the Moluccas 

 on one side and the Eastern Papuan Islands on the other, which 

 possess a fauna mainly derivative from New Guinea, yet wanting 

 many of its distinctive types ; and, in the case of the Moluccas 

 possessing many groups which are not Australian, but derived 

 from the adjacent Oriental region. To the south of these we 

 have the Timor group, whose fauna is clearly derivative, from 

 Australia, from Java, and from the Moluccas. Lastly comes 

 Celebes, whose fauna is most complex and puzzling, and, so far 

 as we can judge, not fundamentally derivative from any of the 

 surrounding islands. 



Papua, or the New Guinea Group. — New Guinea is very 

 deficient in Mammalia as compared with Australia, though this 

 apparent poverty may, in part, depend on our very scanty know- 

 ledge. As yet only four of the Australian families of Marsupials 

 are known to inhabit it, with nine genera, several of which 

 are peculiar. It also possesses a peculiar form of wild pig; 

 but as yet no other non-marsupial terrestrial mammal has been 

 discovered, except a rat, described by Dr. Gray as Uromys 



Vol. I.— 28 



