[ 23 j 



II. A List of the Birds known to inhabit the Island of Celebes. By Akthuk, 

 Viscount Walden, F.B.S., President of the Society. 



Bead May 2nd, 1871. 



[Plates III. to X.] 



SITUATED in the midst of the vast collection of islands which contribute to form the 

 Malay archipelago, Celebes possesses an avifauna of a type peculiar to itself. The 

 geographical position of the island and the leading characteristics of its fauna have been 

 so clearly explained and depicted by Mr. Wallace', that it is almost unnecessary for me 

 to add any observations of my own on these points. 



This great naturalist has shown that the principal and most striking peculiarity of 

 the fauna of Celebes is its individuality — a generalization fully supported by the 

 evidence furnished by its birds ; and it is the chief object of this paper to give a list 

 of all the birds authentically recorded as inhabitants of Celebes, and to show in some 

 detail the zoogeographical relations of its genera and species. 



Our knowledge of the Celebean ornis has been principally derived from the discoveries 

 of the Dutch travellers Forsten, Von Rosenberg, and Bernstein, and from those of Mr. 

 Wallace. Yet although the Dutch naturalists and our great English traveller ransacked 

 those parts of Celebes they traversed or resided in, they all more or less covered the 

 same ground. The larger portion of the island (fully two thirds of its area) still 

 remains ornithologically unknown. 



All the species yet described from Celebes appear to have been obtained from the 

 districts of Macassar and Bonthain in the south, and from the districts of Gorontalo and 

 Minahassa in the north. That part of the island which stretches north from about the 

 fifth parallel S. lat. to the Gulf of Tontoli, and east thence to Limbotto, the lesser of 

 the two eastern limbs of the island, the whole of the south-east limb, and all the central 

 country from which these limbs extend seem to have never been explored by an orni- 

 thologist. 



The group of islands of which Peling is the largest, and which are only separated 

 from the Sula Islands by the Greyhound Straits, the Togian or Schildpad Islands in the 

 Gulf of Tomini, the islands of Pagasane and of Bceton, and the island of Saleyer, with 

 its train of smaller satellites almost connecting Celebes with Flores, are nearly wholly 

 unknown. The Sanghir Islands in the north, and the Sula Islands to the east, although 

 as yet only partially investigated, have been shown to possess some species identical 

 with those found in Celebes ; consequently they have been regarded by recent authors 



1 Malay Archipelago, vol. i. chap, xyiii. 



vol. viii. — paet ii. May, 1872. p 



