(;hap. xx.] CELEBES. 4o3 



on the globe. Having already given a full account of some 

 of these peculiarities in a paper read before the Linnean 

 Society — republished in my ContributiGns to the Theory of 

 Natural Selection, — while others have been discussed in my 

 Geograjjhical Bistrihnfmi of Animals (Vol. I. p. 434) — I will 

 only here briefly refer to them in order to see whether they 

 accord with, or receive any explanation from, the somewhat 

 novel view of the past history of the island here advanced. 



The general distribution of the two best known groups of 

 insects — the butterflies and the beetles — agrees very closely 

 with that of the birds and mammalia, inasmuch as Celebes 

 forms the eastern limit of a number of Asiatic and Malayan 

 genera, and at the same time the western limit of several 

 Moluccan and Australian genera, the former perhaps pre- 

 ponderating as in the higher animals. 



Hinudayan Types of Birds and Bidterfiies in Celeles. — A 

 curious fact of distribution exhibited both among butterflies 

 and birds, is the occurrence in Celebes of species and genera 

 unknown to the adjacent islands, but only found again when 

 w^e reach the Himalayan mountains or the Indian Peninsula. 

 Among birds w^e have a small yellow flycatcher {Myialestes 

 hehanthea), a flowTr-pecker (Pachyglossa aureoUmhata), a finch 

 (Munia hrunneiceps), and a roller (Coracias temminckii) , all 

 closely allied to Indian (not Malayan) species,— all the genera, 

 except Munia, being, in fact, unknov/n in any Malay island. 

 Exactly parallel cases are two butterflies of the genera Dichor- 

 rhagia and Euripus, which have very close allies in the Hima- 

 layas, but nothing like them in any intervening country. These 

 facts call to mind the similar case of Formosa, where some of 

 its birds and mammals occurred again, under identical or closely 

 allied forms, in the Himalayas ; and in both instances they can 

 only be explained by going back to a period w^hen the distribu- 

 tion of these forms was very different from what it is now. 



Peculiarities of Shape and Colour in Celehesian Butterflies.—^ 

 Even more remarkable are the peculiarities of shape and colour 

 in a number of Celebesian butterflies of different genera. These 

 are found to vary all in the same manner, indicating some 

 general cause of variation able to act upon totally distinct 



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