chap, xin.] THE AUSTRALIAN REGION. 413 



preeminently Australian in character and possesses many peculiar 

 developments of Australian types, it has also — as might be ex- 

 pected from its geographical position, its climate, and its vege- 

 tation — received an infusion of Malayan forms. But while one 

 group of these is spread over the whole Archipelago, and occa- 

 sionally beyond it, there is another group which presents the 

 unusual and interesting feature of discontinuous distribution, 

 jumping over a thousand miles of island-studded sea from Java 

 and Borneo to New Guinea itself. It is a parallel case to that 

 of Java in the Oriental region, which we have already discussed, 

 but the suggested explanation in that case is more difficult to 

 apply here. The recent soundings by the Challenger show us, 

 that although the several islands of the Moluccas are surrounded 

 by water from 1,200 to 2,800 fathoms deep, yet these seas form 

 inclosed basins with rims not more than from 400 to 900 

 fathoms deep, suggesting the idea of great lakes or inland seas 

 which have sunk down bodily with the surrounding land, or that 

 enormous local and restricted elevations and subsidences have 

 here occurred. We have also the numerous small islands and coral 

 banks south of Celebes and eastward towards Timor-Laut and the 

 Aru Islands, indicating great subsidence ; and it is possible that 

 there was an extension of Papua to the west, approaching suffi- 

 ciently near to Java to receive occasional straggling birds of Indo- 

 Malay type, altogether independent of the Moluccas to the north. 

 Bright Colours and Ornamental Plumage of New Guinea Birds. 

 — One of the most striking features of Papuan ornithology is the 

 large proportion which the handsome and bright-coloured birds 

 bear to the more obscure species. That this is really the case 

 has been ascertained by going over my own collections, made at 

 Aru and New Guinea, and comparing them with my collection 

 made at Malacca — a district remarkable for the number of hand- 

 some birds it produces. Using, as nearly as possible, the same 

 standard of beauty, about one-third of the Malacca birds may be 

 classed as handsome, 1 while in Papua the proportion comes out 

 exactly one-half. This is due, in part to the great abundance of 



1 I also find about this proportion in my Amazonian collections, even 

 counting all the humming-birds, parrots, and toucans as handsome birds. 



