CHAr. XVIII,] 



JAPAN AND FORMOSA. 



373 



it seems probable that few, if any islands of approximately the 

 same size and equally removed from a continent will be found to 

 equal it in the number and variety of their higher animals. The 

 outline map (at page 364) shows that Formosa is connected with 

 the mainland by a submerged bank, the hundred-fathom line 

 including it along with Hainan to the south-west and Japan on 

 the north-east ; while the line of two-hundred fathoms includes 

 also the Madjico-Sima and Loo-Choo Islands, and may, perhaps, 

 mark out approximately the last great extension of the Asiatic 

 continent, the submergence of which isolated these islands 

 from the mainland. 



Animal Life of Formosa. — We are at present acquainted 

 with 35 species of mammalia, and 128 species of land-birds 

 from Formosa, fourteen of the former and forty-three of the 

 latter being peculiar, while the remainder inhabit also some 

 part of the continent or adjacent islands. This proportion of 

 peculiar species is perhaps (as regards the birds) the highest to 

 be met with in any island which can be classed as both conti- 

 nental and recent, and this, in all probability, implies that the 

 epoch of separation is somewhat remote. It was not, however, 

 remote enough to reach back to a time when the continental 

 fauna was very different from what it is now, for we find all the 

 chief types of living Asiatic mammalia represented in this small 

 island. Thus we have monkeys; insectivora; numerous car- 

 nivora; pigs, deer, antelopes, and cattle among ungulata; 

 numerous rodents, and the edentate Manis, — a very fair repre- 

 sentation of Asiatic mammals, all being of known genera, and of 

 species either absolutely identical with some still living else- 

 where or very closely allied to them. The birds exhibit analo- 

 gous phenomena, with the exception that we have here two 

 peculiar and very interesting genera. 



But besides the amount of specific and generic modification 

 that has occurred, we have another indication of the lapse 

 of time in the peculiar relations of a large proportion of the 

 Formosan animals, which show that a great change in the dis- 

 tribution of Asiatic species must have taken place since the 

 separation of the island from the continent. Before pointing 

 these out it will be advantageous to give lists of the mammalia 



