chap, xiv.] OF THE TIMOR GROUP. 323 



remained unchanged, would therefore indicate that the 

 district was first peopled from Australia. But, for this to 

 have been the case, the physical conditions must have been 

 very different from what they are now. Nearly three 

 hundred miles of open sea now separate Australia from 

 Timor, which island is connected with Java by a chain of 

 broken land divided by straits which are nowhere more 

 than about twenty miles wide. Evidently there are now 

 great facilities for the natural productions of Java to 

 spread over and occupy the whole of these islands, while 

 those of Australia would find very great difficulty in 

 getting across. To account for the present state of things, 

 we should naturally suppose that Australia was once much 

 more closely connected with Timor than it is at present ; 

 and that this was the case is rendered highly probable by 

 the fact of a submarine bank extending along all the north 

 and west coast of Australia, and at one place approaching 

 within twenty miles of the coast of Timor. This indicates 

 a recent subsidence of North Australia, which probably 

 once extended as far as the edge of this bank, between 

 which and Timor there is an unfathomed depth of ocean. 



I do not think that Timor was ever actually connected 

 with Australia, because such a large number of very abun- 

 dant and characteristic groups of Australian birds are 

 quite absent, and not a single Australian mammal has 

 entered Timor ; which would certainly not have been the 



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