396 MY LIFE 



During the succeeding five years I continued the study of 

 my collections, writing many papers, of which more than a 

 dozen related to birds, some being of considerable length and 

 involving months of continuous study. But I also wrote 

 several on physical and zoological geography, six on various 

 questions of anthropology, and five or six on special applica- 

 tions of the theory of natural selection. I also began working 

 at my insect collections, on which I wrote four rather elabor- 

 ate papers. As several of these papers discussed matters of 

 considerable interest and novelty, I will here give a brief 

 summary of the more important of them in the order in which 

 they were written. 



The first of these, read in January, 1863, at a meeting of 

 the Zoological Society, was on my birds from Bouru, and was 

 chiefly important as showing that this island was undoubtedly 

 one of the Moluccan group, every bird found there which was 

 not widely distributed being either identical with or closely 

 allied to Moluccan species, while none had special affinities 

 with Celebes. It was clear, then, that this island formed the 

 most westerly outlier of the Moluccan group. 



My next paper of importance, read before the same society 

 in the following November, was on the birds of the chain of 

 islands extending from Lombok to the great island of Timor. 

 I gave a list of one hundred and eighty-six species of birds, 

 of which twenty-nine were altogether new ; but the special 

 importance of the paper was that it enabled me to mark out 

 precisely the boundary line between the Indian and Australian 

 zoological regions, and to trace the derivation of the rather 

 peculiar fauna of these islands, partly from Australia and 

 partly from the Moluccas, but with a strong recent migration 

 of Javanese species due to the very narrow straits separating 

 most of the islands from each other. The following table will 

 serve to illustrate this : — 



Lombok. 



Species derived from Java 34 



Species derived from Australia 7 



This table shows how two streams of immigration have 



Floras. 



Timor. 



28 



17 



14 



36 



