CHAP. XIII.] 
THE AUSTRALIAN REGION. 
419 
cuius is Malayan, and especially Philippine, but it reaches as far 
as Mysol. Tver on is here at its eastern limit, and is represented 
in Bouru and Ceram by one of the most beautiful species. 
Neopus, a Malayan eagle, is said to occur in the Moluccas. We 
find then only three characteristic Indo-Malay types in the 
Moluccas, — Criniger, Batmchostomus, and Treron. All are repre- 
sented by distinct and well marked species, indicating a some- 
what remote period since their ancestors entered the district 
but all are birds of considerable powers of flight, so that a very 
little extension of the islands in a south-westerly direction 
would afford the means of transmission, but this could not well 
have been by way of Celebes, because the two former genera are 
unknown in that island. 
It is evident, therefore, that the Moluccas are wholly Papuan 
in their zoology ; yet they are no less clearly derivative, and must 
have obtained their original immigrants under conditions that 
rendered a full representation of the fauna impossible. Such 
remarkable and dominant types as the eleven genera of Para- 
diseidefi, with Cr adieus, Bectes, Todopsis , Macluerirhyncbus, Gery - 
gone , Dacelo, Podargas, Gydopsitta, Microglossum , Nasiterna, dial - 
copsitta, and Goura , — all characteristic Papuan groups, found in 
almost all the islands and most of them very abundant, are yet 
totally absent from the Moluccas. Taking this, in conjunction 
with the absence of the two genera of Papuan kangaroos and 
the other smaller groups of marsupials, and we must be 
convinced that the Moluccas cannot be mere fragments of the 
old Papuan land, or they would certainly, in some one or other 
of their large and fertile islands, have preserved a more com- 
plete representation of the parent fauna. Most of the Moluccan 
birds are very distinct from the allied species of New Guinea ; 
and this would imply that the entrance of the original forms 
took place at a remote period. The two peculiar genera with 
clearly Papuan affinities, show the same thing. The cassowary, 
found only in the large island of Ceram and distinct from any 
Papuan species, would however seem to have required a land 
connection for its introduction, almost as much as any of the 
larger mammalia. 
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