46 



ISLAND LIFE. 



[PAET I, 



Insectivora, Carnivora, nor UngiTlata, while even the rodents are 

 only represented by a few small rats and mice. In the Pacific 

 Islands mammals are altogether absent (except perhaps in 'New 

 Zealand), but in the Moluccas and other islands bordering on the 

 Oriental region the higher mammals are represented by a few 

 deer, civets, and pigs, though it is doubtful whether the two 

 former may not have been introduced by man, as was almost 

 certainly the case with the semi-domesticated dingo of Australia. 

 These peculiarities in the mammalia are so great that every 

 naturalist agrees that Australia must be made a separate region, 

 the only difference of opinion being as to its extent, some think- 

 ing that I^ew Zealand should form another separate region ; but 

 this question need not now delay us. 



In birds Australia is by no means so isolated from the rest of 

 the world, as it contains great numbers of warblers, thrushes, 

 flycatchers, shrikes, crows, and other familiar types of the Eastern 

 Hemisphere ; yet a considerable number of the most character- 

 istic Oriental families are absent. Thus there are no vultures, 

 ^voodpeckers, pheasants, bulbuls, or barbets in the Australian 

 region ; and the absence of these is almost as marked a feature 

 as that of cats, deer, or monkeys, among mammalia. The most 

 conspicuous and characteristic birds of the Australian region are, 

 the piping crows; the honey-suckers (Meliphagidse), a family 

 quite peculiar to the region ; the lyre-birds ; the great terrestrial 

 kingfishers (Dacelo) ; the great goat-suckers called more-porks 

 in Australia and forming the genus Podargus ; the wonderful 

 abundance of parrots, including such remarkable forms as the 

 white and the black cockatoos, and the gorgeously coloured brush- 

 tongued lories ; the almost equal abundance of fine pigeons 

 more gaily coloured than any others on the globe ; the strange 

 brush-turkeys and mound-builders, the only birds that never si* 

 upon their eggs, but allow them to be hatched, reptile-like, by 

 the heat of the sand or of fermenting vegetable matter ; and 

 lastly, the emus and cassowaries, in which the wings are far 

 more rudimentary than in the ostriches of Africa and South 

 America. New Guinea and the surrounding islands are remark- 

 able for their tree-kangaroos, their birds-of-paradise, their raquet- 

 tailed kingfishers, their great crown-pigeons, their crimson lories, 



