4 



ISLAND LIFE. 



[part k 



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 w^onderful 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 than 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 quad- 

 rupeds than do England and Japan. The birds of the one are 

 extremely unlike those of the other, the difference being such 

 as to strike even the most ordinary observer. Bali has red and 

 green woodpeckers, barbets, Vv^eaver-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 un- 

 known 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 is none the less remarkable — as 

 proving that mere distance is one of the least important of the 

 causes which have determined the likeness or unlikeness in the 

 animals of different countries. OOt ' 



