198 THE MALAYAN PAPILIONIDE AS 
study of nature would have lost for me its greatest 
charm. I should feel as would the geologist, if you 
could convince him that his interpretation of the earth’s 
past history was all a delusion—that strata were never 
formed in the primeval ocean, and that the fossils he so 
carefully collects and studies are no true record of a 
former living world, but were all created just as they 
now are, and in the rocks where he now finds them. 
I must here express my own belief that none of these 
phenomena, however apparently isolated or insignificant, 
can ever stand alone—that not the wing of a butterfly 
can change in form or vary in colour, except in har- 
mony with, and as a part of the grand march of nature. 
I believe, therefore, that all the curious phenomena I 
have just recapitulated, are immediately dependent on 
the last series of changes, organic and inorganic, in 
these regions; and as the phenomena presented by the 
island of Celebes differ from those of all the surround- 
ing islands, it can, I conceive, only be because the past 
history of Celebes has been, to some extent, unique and 
different from theirs. We must have much more evi- 
dence to determine exactly in what that difference has 
consisted. At present, I only see my way clear to one 
deduction, viz., that Celebes represents one of the oldest 
parts of the archipelago ; that it has been formerly more 
completely isolated both from India and from Australia 
than it is now, and that amid all the mutations it has 
undergone, a relic or substratum of the fauna and 
flora of some more ancient land has been here pre- 
served to us. 
