4 



ISLAND LIFE 



PART I 



thrushes, buntings, and house-sparrows, some absolutely 

 identical with our own feathered friends, others so closely 

 resembling them that it requires a practised ornithologist 

 to tell the difference. If he is fond of insects he notices 

 many butterflies and a host of beetles which, though on 

 close examination they are found to be distinct from ours, 

 are yet of the same general aspect, and seem just what 

 might be expected in any part of Europe. There are also 

 of course many birds and insects which are quite new and 

 peculiar, but these are by no means so numerous or 

 conspicuous as to remove the general impression of a 

 wonderful resemblance between the productions of such 

 remote islands as Britain and Yesso. 



Now let an inhabitant of Australia sail to New Zealand, 

 a distance of less than thirteen hundred miles, and he will 

 find himself in a country whose productions are totally 

 unlike those of his own. Kangaroos and wombats there 

 are none, the birds are almost all entirely new, insects are 

 very scarce and quite unlike the handsome or strange 

 Australian forms, while even the vegetation is all changed, 

 and no gum-tree, or wattle, or grass-tree meets the 

 traveller's eye. 



But there are some more striking cases even tha^. this, 

 of the diversity of the productions of countries not far 

 apart. In the Malay Archipelago there are two islands, 

 named Bali and Lombok, each about as large as Corsica, 

 and separated by a strait only fifteen miles wide at its 

 narrowest part. Yet these islands differ far more from 

 each other in their birds and quadrupeds than do England 

 and Japan. The birds of the one are extremely ttnlike 

 those of the other, the difference being such as to strike 

 even the most ordinary observer. Bali has red and green 

 woodpeckers, barbets, weaver-birds, and black-and-white 

 magpie-robins, none of which are found in Lombok, where, 

 however, we find screaming cockatoos and friar-birds, and 

 the strange mound-building megapodes, which are all 

 equally unknown in Bali. Many of the kingfishers, crow- 

 shrikes, and other birds, though of the same general form, 

 are of very distinct species ; and though a considerable 

 number of birds are the same in both islands the difference 



