426 



ISLAND LIFP:. 



[part II. 



from each other and from the adjacent Pacific and Indian 

 Oceans (see map). This peculiar formation of the sea-bottom 

 probably indicates that this area has been the seat of great local 

 upheavals and subsidences; and it is quite in' accordance with 

 this view that we find the Moluccas, while closely agreeing with 

 New Guinea in their forms of life, yet strikingly deficient in 

 many important groups, and exhibiting an altogether poverty- 

 striken appearance as regards the higher animals. It is a 

 suggestive fact that the Philippine Islands bear an exactly 

 parallel relation to Borneo, being equally deficient in many of 

 the higher groups ; and here too, in the Sooloo Sea, we find a 

 similar enclosed basin of great depth. Hence we may in both 

 cases connect, on the one hand, the extensive area of land-surface 

 and of adjacent shallow sea with a long period of stability and a 

 consequent rich development of the forms of life ; and, on the 

 other hand, a highly broken land-surface with the adjacent seas 

 of great but very unequal depths, with a period of disturbance, 

 probably involving extensive submersions of the land, resulting 

 in a scanty and fragmentary vertebrate fauna. 



Zoology of Celebes. — The zoology of Celebes differs so remark- 

 ably from that of both the great divisions of the Archipelago 

 above indicated, that it is very difficult to decide in which 

 to place it. It possesses only about sixteen species of terrestrial 

 mammalia, so that it is at once distinguished from Borneo and 

 Java by its extreme poverty in this class. Of this small number 

 four belong to the Moluccan and Australian fauna — there being 

 two marsupials of the genus Cuscus, and two forest rats said 

 to be allied to Australian types. 



The remaining twelve species are, generally speaking, of 

 Malayan or Asiatic types, but some of them are so peculiar 

 that they have no near allies in any part of the world ; while 

 the rest are of the ordinary Malay type or even identical with 

 Malayan species, and some of these may be recent introductions 

 through human agency. These twelve species of Asiatic type 

 will be now enumerated. They consist of five peculiar squirrels 

 — a group unknown farther east ; a peculiar species of wild 

 pig; a deer so closely allied to the Cervus hippelaphus of 

 Borneo that it may well have been introduced by man bot 



