6 



ISLAND LIFE 



PART I 



Australia are slight and unimportant as compared with 

 the enormous differences we find when we pass from 

 the latter country to equally tropical Java. If we 

 compare corresponding portions of different continents, we 

 find no indication that the almost perfect similarity of 

 climate and general conditions has any tendency to produce 

 similarity in the animal world. The equatorial parts of 

 Brazil and of the West Coast of Africa are almost identical 

 in climate and in luxuriance of vegetation, but their 

 animal life is totally diverse. In the former we have 

 tapirs, sloths, and prehensile-tailed monkeys; in the 

 latter elephants, antelopes, and man-like apes ; while 

 among birds, the toucans, chatterers, and humming-birds 

 of Brazil are replaced by the plantain-eaters, bee-eaters, 

 and sun-birds of Africa. Parts of South-temperate 

 America, South Africa, and South Australia, correspond 

 closely in climate ; yet the birds and quadrupeds of these 

 three districts are as completely unlike each other as 

 those of any parts of the world that can be named. 



If we visit the great islands of the globe, we find that 

 they present similar anomalies in their animal productions, 

 for while some exactly resemble the nearest continents 

 others are widely different. Thus the quadrupeds, birds 

 and insects of Borneo correspond very closely to those 

 of the Asiatic continent, while those of Madagascar are 

 extremely unlike African forms, although the distance from 

 the continent is less in the latter case than in the former. 

 And if we compare the three great islands Sumatra, 

 Borneo, and Celebes — lying as it were side by side in the 

 same ocean — we find that the two former, although 

 furthest apart, have almost identical productions, while 

 the two latter, though closer together, are more unlike 

 than Britain and Japan situated in different oceans and 

 separated by the largest of the great continents. 



These examples will illustrate the kind of questions it 

 is the object of the present work to deal with. Every 

 continent, every country, and every island on the globe, 

 offers similar problems of greater or less complexity and 

 interest, and the time has now arrived when their solution 

 can be attempted with some prospect of success. Many 



