LIFE IN LONDON 395 



My next work was to describe five new birds from New 

 Guinea obtained by my assistant, Mr. Allen, during his last 

 visit there, and also seven new species obtained during his 

 visit to the north of Gilolo and Morty Island. I also de- 

 scribed three new species of the beautiful genus Pitta, com- 

 monly called ground-thrushes, but more nearly allied to the 

 South American ant-thrushes (Formicariidae), or perhaps 

 to the Australian lyre-birds. I also began a series of papers 

 dealing with the birds of certain islands or groups of islands 

 for the purpose of elucidating the geographical distribution 

 of animals in the archipelago. The first of these was a list of 

 the birds from the Sula or Xulla Islands, situated between 

 Celebes and the Moluccas, but by their position seeming to 

 belong more to the latter. I believe that not a single species 

 of bird was known from these small islands, and I should 

 probably not have thought them worth visiting had I not 

 been assured by native traders that a very pretty little par- 

 rot was found there and nowhere else. I therefore sent 

 Mr. Allen there for two months, and he obtained a small but 

 very interesting collection, consisting of forty-eight species of 

 birds, of which seven were entirely new, including the little 

 parrakeet which I named Loriculus sclateri, and which is one 

 of the most beautiful of the genus. But the most interesting 

 feature of the collection was that it proved indisputably that 

 these islands, though nearer to Bouru and the Batchian group 

 than to Celebes, really formed outlying portions of the latter 

 island, since no less than twenty of the species were found 

 also in Celebes and only ten in the Moluccas, while of the 

 new species five were closely allied to Celebesian types, while 

 only two were nearest to Moluccan species. This very curious 

 and interesting result has led other naturalists to visit these 

 islands as well as all the other small islands which cluster 

 around the strangely formed large island. The result has 

 been that considerable numbers of new species have been 

 discovered, while the intimate connection of these islands with 

 Celebes, so clearly shown by this first small collection, has 

 been powerfully enforced. 



