460 



ISLAND LIFE 



PART II 



and this is the more noteworthy on account of the com- 

 parative poverty of its types of birds. 



Although the preponderance of affinity, especially in the 

 case of its more ancient and peculiar forms, is undoubtedly 

 with Asia rather than with Australia ; yet, still more 

 decidedly than in the case of the mammalia, are we for- 

 bidden to suppose that it ever formed a part of the old 

 Asiatic continent, on account of the absence of so many 

 important and extensive groups of Asiatic birds. It is not 

 single species or even* genera, but whole families that 

 are thus absent, and among them families which are pre- 

 eminently characteristic of all tropical Asia. Such are 

 the Timeliidse, or babblers, of which there are twenty- 

 three genera in Borneo, and many more in the Oriental 

 Region, but of which only a few species and one peculiar 

 genus inhabit Celebes ; the Pycnonotid^, or bulb u Is, ab- 

 solutely ubiquitous in tropical Asia and Malaya, but almost 

 unknown in Celebes ; the Eurylsemidse, or gapers, found 

 everywhere in the great Malay Islands ; the Megalsemida), 

 or bar bets ; the Trogonidge, or trogons ; and the Phasianidse, 

 or pheasants, all pre-eminently Asiatic and Malayan but 

 all absent from Celebes, with the exception of the common 

 jungle-fowl, which, owing to the passion of Malays for cock- 

 fighting, may have been introduced. To these important 

 families may be added Asiatic and Malayan genera by the 

 score ; but, confining ourselves to these six ubiquitous 

 families, we must ask, — Is it possible, that, at the period 

 when the ancestors of the peculiar Celebes mammals 

 entered the island, and when the forms of life, though 

 distinct, could not have been quite unlike those now living, 

 it could have actually formed a part of the continent 

 without possessing representatives of the greater part of 

 these extensive and important families of birds ? To get 

 rid altogether of such varied and dominant types of bird- 

 life by any subsequent process of submersion is more 

 difficult than to exterminate mammalia; and we are 

 therefore again driven to our former conclusion — that the 

 present land of Celebes has never (in recent geological 

 times) been united to the Asiatic continent, but has re- 

 ceived its population of Asiatic forms by migration across 



