Introduction: Wallace’s line. 
81 
not in the first edition of 1879, p. 419, and we are not aware whether it is in 
subsequent ones): “We thus have the Sunda Chain divided distinctly and definitely 
into an Asiatic and an Australian portion, the dividing line coinciding with the 
deep-sea channel existing between Bali and Lombok. This boundary is now 
universally known as ‘Wallace’s line’”. 
M. Weber, 1894, in his important paper: “Die Siisswasser-Fische des 
Indischen Archipels, nebst Bemerkungen iiber den Ursprung der Fauna von 
Celebes” (Zool. Ergebnisse III, 468) came to the result that Celebes has no 
Australian, but a highly impoverished Indian character in its fish-fauna, and 
remarked as to the general problem (p. 473): “The unhappy line of Wallace, 
which he himself has not formally retained for Celebes, has worked its way 
deeply into the brains of numerous zoologists as something fascinatingly simple. 
Text-books which touch upon zoogeography and get rid of the subject in a few 
words maintain their hold on this classical frontier. And thus the Australian 
Fauna of Celebes lives notwithstanding various protests.” Prof. Weber concludes 
(p. 476): “The original line of Wallace separates groups of islands, of which 
the western (Borneo, Sumatra and Java) received, on account of their size, but 
chiefly in consequence of their longer connection with the Indian continent, a 
rich Oriental fauna and, therefore, have developed specific forms of Indian 
character. Of the eastern, Celebes was first separated from the Indian continent 
and remained cut off. In consequence , it retained single older forms, which 
developed independently. — Consisting in earlier times of single smaller islands, 
its fauna has remained poor.” 
F. E. Beddard, in 1895 (“A Text-Book of Zoogeography”), recognises 
Wallace’s line (p. 103 and frontispiece-map) as a frontier between the Oriental 
and the Australian Regions (p. 103 and 113), though (p. 113) he says that Celebes 
“probably” belongs to the latter, but (p. 106) treats of it under the heading of 
the Malayan Sub-region of the former. 
R. Lydekker in 1896 (“A Geographical History of Mammals”, p. 45 and 
map), adopts Heilprin’s Transition Region (see above) as an Austro-Malayan Region 
and as one of four Regions of the Notogaeic Realm (p. 27): “Poverty, and an 
admixture of Australian and Malayan types, with a very marked preponderance 
of the latter, are the leading features in its mammalian fauna”. He says, how- 
ever, that from the living mammalian fauna one might be inclined to place the 
whole area within the limits of the Oriental Region. He evidently hesitates 
in giving Celebes a fixed position, the more so as “there is absolutely no palae- 
ontological evidence to help us in regard to past history”. 
C. Hedley (“Mollusca of the Oriental region”: Journ. of Malacol. IV, 53) 
showed, 1 895, that the line between Bali and Lombok has no value for the 
Mollusca, as the land-shells of these two islands do not diff'er essentially. 
Likewise E. v. Martens showed in 1896 (Sb. Ges. natf. Freunde zu Berlin 
p. 157), that of 10 land-shells from Lombok 3 are geographically neutral, 4 are 
