462 



ISLAHD LIFE 



tAilT II 



glossidse and Meliphagidse among birds, and being so 

 strikingly deficient in all the more characteristic Oriental 

 families and genera of both classes, I at first placed it in 

 the Australian Region ; but as the larger portion of its 

 mammals and birds have undoubtedly Asiatic affinites, 

 it cannot be altogether excluded from the Oriental 

 Region. 



Peculiarities of the Insects of Celebes. — The only other 

 class of animals in Celebes, of which we have a tolerable 

 knowledge, is that of insects, among which we meet with 

 peculiarities of a very remarable kind, and such as are 

 found in no other island on the globe. Having already 

 given a full account of some of these peculiarities in a 

 paper read before the Linnean Society — republished in my 

 ConPiHhUions to the Theory of Natural Selection, — while 

 others have been discussed in my Geographical Dis- 

 tribution of Animals (Vol. I. p. 434) — I will only here 

 briefly refer to them in order to see whether they ac- 

 cord with, or receive any explanation from, the some- 

 what novel view of the past history of the island here 

 advanced. 



The general distribution of the two best known groups 

 of insects — the butterflies and the beetles — agrees very 

 closely with that of the birds and mammalia, inasmuch 

 as Celebes forms the eastern limit of a number of 

 Asiatic and Malayan genera, and at the same time 

 the western limit of several Moluccan and Australian 

 genera, the former perhaps preponderating as in the 

 higher animals. 



Himalayan Types of Birds and Butterflies in Celebes. — 

 A curious fact of distribution exhibited both among butter- 

 flies and birds, is the occurrence in Celebes of species and 

 genera unknown to the adjacent islands, but only found 

 again when we reach the Himalayan mountains or the 

 Indian Peninsula. Among birds we have a small yellow 

 flycatcher {Gulicicapa helianthea), a flower-pecker (Acmono- 

 rhynchus aioreolimbatd), and a roller {Coracias temminchii), 

 all allied to Indian rather than to Malayan species. An 

 exactly parallel case is that of a butterfly of the genus 



