350 
ZOOLOGICAL GEOGRAPHY. 
[part hi. 
localities and which must therefore be held to be typical Ma- 
layan groups, the following are absent from Java: Viverra , 
Gymnopm , Lutra, Helarctos , Tajrirus, Elephas, and Gym- aura ; 
while of those known to occur in two, and which, owing to our 
imperfect knowledge, may very probably one day be discovered in 
the third, the following are equally wanting : Simla , , Siamanga, 
Hemigalea, Paguma y Rhinosdurus , and Rhizomys. It may be 
said this is only negative evidence, but in the case of J ava it is 
much more, because this island is not only the best known of 
any in the archipelago, but there is perhaps no portion of 
British India of equal extent so well known. It is one of the 
oldest of the Dutch possessions and the seat of their colonial 
government ; good roads traverse it in every direction, and ex- 
perienced naturalists have been resident in various parts of 
it for years together, and have visited every mountain and every 
forest, aided by bands of diligent native collectors. We 
should be almost as likely to find new species of mammalia 
in Central Europe as in Java ; and therefore the absence of 
such animals as the Malay bear, the elephant, tapir, gymnura, 
and even less conspicuous forms, must be accepted as a 
positive fact. 
In the other islands there are still vast tracts of forest in the 
hands of natives and utterly unexplored, and any similar absence 
in their case will prove little ; yet on making the same com- 
parison in the case of Borneo, the most peculiar and the least 
known of the other portions of the sub-region, we find only 
2 genera absent which are found in the three other divisions, 
and only 3 which are found in two others. A fact to be noted 
also is, that the only genus found in Java but not in other parts 
of the sub-region ( Helictis ) occurs again in North India; and 
that some Javan species , as Rhinoceros javanicus, and Zepus kur- 
gosa occur again in the Indo-Chinese sub-region, but not in the 
Malayan. 
Among the birds we meet with facts of a similar import ; 
and though the absence of certain types from Java is not quite 
so certain as among the mammalia, this is more than balanced 
by the increased number of such deficiencies, so that if a few 
