398 MY LIFE 



weaver-birds (Ploceus), the ground starlings (Sturnopastor), 

 several genera of woodpeckers, and an immense number of 

 genera of flycatchers, tits 5 gapers, bulbuls, and other perching 

 birds which abound everywhere in Borneo and Java. 



Two other papers dealt, with the parrots and the pigeons 

 of the whole archipelago, and are among the most important 

 of my studies of geographical distribution. That on parrots 

 was written in 1864, and read at a meeting of the Zoological 

 Society in June. Although the Malay Archipelago as a 

 whole is one of the richest countries in varied forms of the 

 parrot tribe, that richness is almost wholly confined to its 

 eastern or Australian portion, for while there are about 

 seventy species between Celebes and the Solomon Islands, 

 there are only five in the three large islands, Java, Borneo, and 

 Sumatra, together with the Malay peninsula, while the Philip- 

 pine Islands have twelve. ■ This extreme richness of the 

 Moluccas and New Guinea is also characteristic of the Pacific 

 Islands and Australia, so that the Australian region, with its 

 comparatively small area of land, contains nearly as many 

 species of this tribe of birds as the rest of the globe and 

 considerably more than the vast area of tropical America, the 

 next richest of all the regions. 



No two groups of birds can well be more unlike in struc- 

 ture, form, and habits than parrots and pigeons, yet we find 

 that the main features of the distribution of the former, as 

 just described, are found also, though in a less marked degree, 

 in the latter. The Australian region by itself contains three- 

 fourths as many pigeons as the whole of the rest of the globe ; 

 tropical America, the next richest, having only about half 

 the number ; while tropical Africa and Asia are as poor, com- 

 paratively, in this group as they are in parrots. Turning 

 now to our special subject, the Malay Archipelago, we find 

 that it contains about one hundred and twenty species of 

 pigeons, of which more than two-thirds (about ninety species) 

 belong to the eastern or Austro-Malayan portion of it, which 

 portion thus contains considerably more species, and much 

 more varied forms and colours, than the whole of South 



