432 



ISLAND LIFE. 



[part II. 



both cases to the same conclusion, and forbids us to rank it as 

 a strictly continental island on the Asiatic side. But facts of 

 a very similar character are equally opposed to the idea of 

 a former land-connection with Australia or New Guinea, or 

 even with the Moluccas. The numerous marsupials of those 

 countries are all wanting in Celebes, except the phalangers of 

 the genus Cuscus, and these arboreal creatures are very liable 

 to be carried across narrow seas on trees uprooted by earth- 

 quakes or floods. The terrestrial cassowaries are equally absent ; 

 and thus we can account for the presence of all the Moluccan 

 or Australian types actually found in Celebes without supposing 

 any land-connection on this side during the Tertiary period. 

 The presence of the Celebes ape in the island of Batchian, 

 and of the babirusa in Bouru, can be sufficiently explained by 

 a somewhat closer approximation of the respective lands, or by 

 a few intervening islands which have since disappeared, or it 

 may even be due to human agency. 



If the explanation now given of the peculiar features presented 

 by the fauna of Celebes be the correct one, we are fully justified 

 in classing it as an "anomalous island," since it possesses a 

 small but very remarkable mammalian fauna, without ever 

 having been directly united with any continent or extensive 

 land; and, both by what it has and what it wants, occupies 

 such an exactly intermediate position between the Oriental and 

 Australian regions that it will perhaps ever remain a mere 

 matter of opinion with which it should properly be associated. 

 Forming, as it does, the western limit of such typical Aus- 

 tralian groups as the Marsupials among mammalia, and the 

 Trichoglossidse and Meliphagidse among birds, and being so 

 strikingly deficient in all the more characteristic Oriental 

 families and genera of both classes, I have always placed it in 

 the Australian Eegion ; but it may perhaps with equal propriety 

 be left out of both till a further knowledge of its geology enables 

 us to determine its early history with more precision. 



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 remarkable kind, and such as are found in no other island 



