CHAP. XIV.] 



OF THE TIMOR GllOUF. 



209 



nearly allied to any Australian form, is strongly corrobora- 

 livt; of the opiiiiun lliat Timor has never formed a part of 

 that country; as in that ease some kangarao or other 

 marsupial animal would almost certainly be found there. 

 It is no doubt veiy dilticnlt to account for the presence of 

 some of the fo%v mammals that do exist in Timor, especially 

 the tiger cat and the deer. We must consider, however, 

 that during thousands, and perhaps hundreds of thou- 

 sands of yearSj these islands and the seas between them 

 kave been subjected to volcanic action. The laud has 

 been raised and lias sunk again ; the straits have been 

 narrowed or widened ; many of the islands may have Vjei-n 

 joined and dissevered again ; ^lent floods have again 

 and again devastated the mountains and plains, carrying 

 out to sea hundi^eds of forest trees, as has often happened 

 during volcanic eruptions in Java ; and it does not seem 

 improbable that once in a thousamb or ten thousand years, 

 there should have occurred such a favourable combination 

 of circumstances ae would lead to the migration of two or 

 three land animals from one island to another. This is all 

 tliat we need ask to account for the verj- scanty and frag- 

 mentary group of Mammalia which now inhabit the large 

 islanil of Timor, The deer may very probably lan'e been 

 introduced by man, for tlie Malays often keep tame fawns ; 

 and it may not require a thousand, or even hve hundred 

 years, to establish new characters in an animal removed to 

 a country so diHerent in climate and vegetiition as is 

 Timor from the iloluccas, I have not mentioned horses, 

 which are often thought to be wild iu Timor, because 

 there are no grounds whatever for such a belief. The Timor 

 ponies have ever)' one an owner^ and are quite as mucb 

 domesticated animals as the cattle on a South American 

 hacienda, 



I liave dwelt at some length on the origin of the 

 Timorese fiiuna, because it appears to me a most interest- 

 ing and instructive problem. It is very seldom that we 

 can trace the animals of a district so clearly as we can 

 in this case, to two definite sources ; and still more rarely 

 that they furnish such decisive evidence^ of the time, and 

 the maimer, and the proportions of their introduction. 

 We have here a gi-oup of Oceanic Islands in miuiature^ — 



