CHAP. IX.] INDO-MILAT ISLAWBS, 



14^ 



Sumatra, while the Javanese npecies occurs in Birmali antl 

 even in Bengal Among bij-ds, the small ground dove, 

 Geopelia striata, and the curious bronze -coloured magpie, 

 (Jrj^sirhina varians, are common to Java and Siam; while 

 there are in Java species of Pteruthius, Arrenga, Myio- 

 phouus, Zootbera, Sturnopastor, and Estrelda, the nearast 

 allies of wliich are found in various parts of India, while 

 nothing like them is known to inhabit Borneo or Sumatra. 



Such a curioiia plienonienon as this can only be under- 

 stood, by supposing that, subsequent to the separation 

 of Java, BtDrneo became almost entirely submerged, and 

 itn its re-elevation was for a time connected with the 

 Malay peninsula and Sumatra, but not with Java or 

 Siam, Any geologist who knows how strata Iiave been 

 contorted and tilted up, and how elevations and depres- 

 sions must often Lave occurred alternately, not once or 

 twice only, but scores and even hundreds of times, ^vill 

 have no diffrculty in admitting that such changes as have 

 been here indicated are not in themselves improbable. The 

 existence of extensive coal-beds in Borneo and Sumatra, of 

 such recent origin that the leaves which abound in their 

 shales are scarcely distinguishable from those of the forests 

 which now cover the country, proves that such changes of 

 level actually did take place ; and it is a matter of much 

 interest, both to the geologist and to the philosophic 

 naturalist, to be able to form some conception of the order 

 of those changes, and to understand how they may have 

 resulted in the actual distribution of animal life in these 

 countries ;-^a distribution wdiich often presents phenomena 

 so strange and contradictory, that without taking such 

 changes into consideration we are unable even to imagine 

 how they could have been brought about 



