484 



MR. A. R. WALLACE ON THE 



[Nov. 24, 



Australia would be sinking beneath the ocean. Some such changes 

 as these will enable us to understand how it happens that, though 

 the birds of these islands are on the whole almost as much Indian as 

 Australian, yet the apparently endemic species have such a prepon- 

 derating Australian character, and why such a very large number of 

 characteristic Indian forms, which are common in Java and are known 

 in most instances to extend into Bali, have yet never transmitted a 

 single representative to the islands further east. 



The following is a list of all the birds known to inhabit this group, 

 with their distribution in the several islands. Those marked with 

 an * are not known from any other localities. The descriptions of 

 twenty-eight new species are afterwards given. 



