330 THE LIVING ANIMALS OF THE WORLD 
specimen of the kind I had seen; and after an 
hour’s hard work I handed over the body to the 
owners, who immediately cut it up and roasted 
it for supper.” 
The remarkable tenacity of life possessed by 
the cuscus is fully attested to by Dr. Wallace. 
He says: ‘‘ They move about slowly, and are most 
difficult to kill, owing to the thickness of their 
skins and tenacity of life. A heavy charge of shot 
will often lodge in the skin and do them no 
harm, and even breaking the spine or piercing the 
brain will not kill them for some hours. The 
natives everywhere eat their flesh; and as their 
motions are so slow, easily catch them by climbing ; 
so that it is wonderful that they have not been 
exterminated. It may be, however, that their dense 
woolly fur protects them from birds of prey, and 
the islands they live in are too thinly inhabited 
for man to be able to exterminate them.” 
One of the most notable circumstances re- 
specting the cuscus is the fact that it is one of. 
the few marsupials whose geographical distribution 
extends so far east in the Malay Archipelago as 
to be found associated with many of the higher 
mammalia which are altogether unrepresented in 
Australia or New Guinea. The Moluccas, includ- 
ing notably the islands of Silolo, Ceram, Boru, and many smaller ones, for example, produce 
no less than three species of cuscus, and are also the home of a species of baboon, a civet- 
cat, a deer, and that remarkable pig the babirusa. One other marsupial, a little flying- 
phalanger, is likewise a denizen of these islands. It has been suggested by Dr. Wallace that 
none of the foregoing higher mammals are possibly indigenous to the Moluccas. The baboon, 
he remarks, is only found in the island of Batchian, and seems to be much out of place 
there. It probably originated from some individuals which escaped from confinement, these 
and similar animals being often kept as pets by the Malay inhabitants and carried about in 
their praus. The civet-cat, which is more common in the Philippines and throughout the 
Indo-Malay region, is also carried about in cages from one island to another, and not infrequently 
liberated after the civet has been abstracted from them. The deer, which is likewise tamed 
and petted, its flesh also being much, esteemed for food, might very naturally have been 
brought by the Malays from Java with the express object of its acclimatisation. The babirusa, 
whose headquarters are in the island of Celebes, is only found in Boru, its nearest neighbour 
in the Moluccan group. Dr. Wallace anticipates that these two islands were in former times 
more closely connected by land, and that under such conditions the babirusa may have swum 
across the intervening channel. Should these several hypotheses be correct, the Molucca 
Islands must not be regarded, from a zoological standpoint, as an essentially Australasian or 
marsupial-producing region. 
Photo by W’. Saville-Kent, F.Z.8.] renee 
SPOTTED CUSCUS 
The cuscuses are sleepy animals, with soft, woolly fur, which in 
this spectes is curiously variegated in colour 
THE WOMBATS 
The Wombat Family, claiming the next position in the marsupial galaxy, constitutes the 
very antithesis to the light and graceful arboreal phalangers. There are but three known species, 
one of these inhabiting Tasmania and the adjacent islands, while the other two are peculiar 
to the southern region of the Australian Continent. In forms and gait their thick-set tailless 
bodies suggest a cross between a small bear and a capybara, and as “bears” and “ badgers ” 
