CHAP. XVIII JAPAN AND FORMOSA 



400 



The other orders of animals are not yet sufficiently 

 known to enable us to found any accurate conclusions upon 

 them. The main facts of their distribution have already 

 been given in my Geographical Distribution of Animals 

 (Vol I., pp. 227-231), and they sufficiently agree with the 

 birds and mammalia in showing a mixture of temperate 

 and tropical forms with a considerable proportion of 

 peculiar species. Owing to the comparatively easy passage 

 from the northern extremity of Japan through the island 

 of Saghalien to the mainland of Asia, a large number of 

 temperate forms of insects and birds are still able to enter 

 the country, and thus diminish the proportionate number 

 of peculiar species. In the case of mammals this is more 

 difficult ; and the large proportion of specific difference in 

 their case is a good indication of the comparatively remote 

 epoch at which Japan was finally separated from the 

 continent. How long ago this separation took place we 

 cannot of course tell, but we may be sure it was much 

 longer than in the case of our own islands, and therefore 

 probably in the earlier portion of the Pliocene period. 



Formosa. 



Among recent continental islands there is probably none 

 that surpasses in interest and instructiveness the Chinese 

 island named by the Portuguese, Formosa, or " The 

 Beautiful." Till the middle of the 19th century it was a 

 teiTa incognita to naturalists, and we owe much of our 

 present knowledge of it to a single man, the late Mr. 

 Robert Swinhoe, who, in his official capacity as one of our 

 consuls in China, visited it several times between 1856 

 and 1866, besides residing on it for more than a year. 

 During this period he devoted all his spare time and 

 energy to the study of natural history, more especially of 

 the two important groups, birds and mammals ; and by 

 employing a large staff of native collectors and hunters, he 

 obtained a very complete knowledge of its fauna. In this 

 case, too, we have the great advantage of a very thorough 

 knowledge of the adjacent parts of the continent, in large 

 part due to Mr Swinhoe s own exertions during the twenty 



