A Month in Palawan. 143 
Our party from the University of Michigan reached the island 
about the first of September, 1887, in the midst of the rainy sea- 
son, but as the showers. usually came in the afternoon, we were able 
to do a good deal of hunting and other collecting in the forenoon, 
while we spent the afternoon in skinning and preparing the collec- 
tion of the morning. From lack of roads or other means of com- 
munication, our work was done chiefly on the low, heavily-timbered 
peninsula on which the town is built. We also did some work 
across the bay, along the little river Iguahit, and about a village of 
natives who called themselves Tagbaunas. The collections made 
by us during the four weeks of our stay numbered about seven 
hundred birds of some one hundred and twenty species; thirty 
mammals of five species; thirty amphibia of three species; one 
fresh-water turtle ; fifteen lizards of six species; fifteen snakes of 
nine species; three hundred butterflies of thirty species; a few 
small and inconspicuous beetles, scorpions, and centipedes ; ten or 
twelve species of corals from the shallow waters of the bay, and a 
large number of fine land and tree shells. 
The island has been considered to belong to the Philippine group 
zoologically as well as politically—Mr. Wallace dividing the Indo- 
Malayan sub-region into three divisions: Java, Sumatra, Borneo, 
and Malacca, and the Philippines. Our work would seem to show 
that Palawan is much more nearly allied zoologically to Borneo than 
are the other islands of the group, and probably more nearly allied 
to Borneo than to the other islands. This state of things seems to 
be especially shown in the mammals, in which the island is much 
richer than the rest of the group. It possesses, in common with 
Borneo and the other Philippines, the common gray monkey, Maca- 
cus cynomolgus, a species of Tupaia, one of squirrels, a wild hog, 
and one or two species of civet cats. In addition to these we found 
the manis or pangolin and the binturong, both common to Borneo, 
but wanting in the rest of the Philippines. We also became satis- 
fied of the existence of a porcupine, Hystriz, a large round-tailed 
flying squirrel, Pteromys, and of a small species of the Mustelide, 
with powerful and unpleasant odor. Besides these Bornean forms | 
there is probably also a species of tree-cat, Felis, and a mountain 
goat in the island. These species rest on the evidence of Spaniards 
and half-breeds capable of observing, and worthy of credence. In 
addition to these the savages declare that there is an orang outang 
in the interior. The mammals common to the rest of the Philip- 
